Lyssophobia
by Emma CS Me
Summary: "The dragon must have three heads."/"They say when a Targaryen is born, the gods flip a coin." Rhaegar Targaryen fulfills a prophecy. He's just not sure which one.
1. The Conqueror

**Author's Notes:** Written for the valar_morekinks prompt: "Any Targaryen(s) - Lyssophobia. The fear of going mad."

Trigger warnings: Emotional and physical abuse, violence, mental health issues, depression, self harm, imprisonment, underage sex, referenced rape, character death... I hope I got everything? Just, be aware generally.

* * *

 **i. The Conqueror**

"Rhaegar, sweetling?"

He turns his head and sees his grandmother at his door, looking very tired. "Grandmother?" he asks, wondering what she's doing here – Father doesn't like his parents coming to see his son without him being there. "What's wrong?"

She gives him a sad smile. "Your grandfather wants to see you."

Rhaegar frowns again as he hops off his bed, wincing at a pain in his ankle when he lands. "He's okay, right?" Grandfather's been sick a week or so now, but all the maesters say it's fine, he'll get better.

Shaera says nothing, just takes his hand and leads him to the king's chambers.

Once he gets there he has to wrinkle his nose. "Urgh," he says at the foul smell, and then is embarrassed as Grandfather, still in bed, laughs softly at him.

"My apologies, boy," and Rhaegar feels bad, like he's been rude, to the _king_ no less, but he knows grandfather won't take it personally.

"My love," Grandmother says, rushing to his side and grandfather starts to cough, grabbing his hand. "Are you – do you need me to–"

Grandfather hesitates a moment, but shakes his head. "I'm alright, Shae," he says. "I'll be alright." And Rhaegar frowns. Grandfather doesn't look alright, sheets stained with sweat and blood and – Rhaegar doesn't know what it all is, but it stinks – and drool falls from the corners of his mouth. He looks old. Mama says Grandfather is still quite young, he'll live awhile yet, but Rhaegar is only three and everyone seems old to him. "I just need to talk to the boy for a moment."

"If you're sure," says grandmother and, seemingly oblivious to the smell, she leans down and kisses his brow before she goes, and just before she reaches the door, she reaches across and ruffles Rhaegar's hair.

Once she's gone, he's not really sure what to do. He doesn't know why he's here. Grandfather smiles at him. "Dear boy," he coos, "don't be afraid. Come here."

Rhaegar does so, but the bed is too tall, he can barely peer over the edge of it. Grandfather sighs and, arms shaking with weakness, pushes himself up so he can scoop under Rhaegar's arms and lift him onto the foot of the bed. The second that's done he collapses back into the sheets, exhausted.

"...You're sick," Rhaegar declares, and then he feels stupid. Yes, grandfather's sick. Everyone knows that. But it's nothing serious, right?

"I am," Grandfather smiles at him. "Such a clever boy, aren't you? Already reading the histories at your age. We're very proud of you."

Rhaegar blushes and looks away. "Father doesn't like it," he mutters. Father's always sneering at him and his books, saying it's not right for a boy to be so interested in learning, that it's not a man's interest, that he'll grow up like uncle Daeron if he's not careful. Rhaegar doesn't know what he means.

"Aerys doesn't like anyone doing anything he can't," grandfather sighs. "And it took him until he was twice your age until he learnt his letters." Rhaegar doesn't really know what to say to that, and so he waits while grandfather coughs some more. "But don't worry about him. Come here, son."

Hesitant, Rhaegar does so, and grandfather, still too exhausted to get up, tucks a lock of silver hair behind his ear. "You're such a handsome little lad," he says, and Rhaegar blushes again. "Handsome, clever, brave."

"I'm not brave," Rhaegar insists.

"You are, you just don't know it yet." Grandfather sighs deeply. "You remind me of my father. Although I'm not sure he'd be flattered by that."

Rhaegar never met his great-grandfather; the man died the day he was born, in a great fire. He wishes he had though. Everyone always says wonderful things about him.

"Grandfather," he says, "are you–?"

He's interrupted as Grandfather breaks into coughs once more, and once he's done the man can only croak out words, and Rhaegar's getting worried. He wonders if he should run, so he doesn't get sick too. "Don't fret about me, love," he says, and that doesn't make Rhaegar feel any better. "This isn't about me. It never was." His breath is shaky now, and Rhaegar doesn't understand. "You're the perfect prince, aren't you?"

"Um. If you say so?" Rhaegar doesn't know what the perfect prince is meant to be.

Grandfather smiles sadly again. "You were worth it," he whispers. "Everything. My father, my daughter, my _son_... you were worth it."

Rhaegar still doesn't understand, and he's about to ask Grandfather what he's talking about when the man starts coughing again. He doesn't stop coughing this time though, and when he turns his head into the pillow Rhaegar can see that he's spitting up blood. "Shaerie," he gasps, "get – get, your grandmother, I want to see–"

He's cut off by his own wheezing, like he can't force the air into his lungs, and Rhaegar, three years and terrified, cries out: "Grandmother! Maester! Mother! Father! Help, he's–"

* * *

Rhaegar sees it coming long before anyone else does. Before Father starts burning men with wildfire, Rhaegar sees the burn begin within him.

He's quiet over dinner, helping himself to a roast quail as Father fixes Mother with an icy glare, and she stubbornly refuses to look ashamed. It's the first time they've all dined together since the last babe. Father has not forgiven Mother for it, even though Maester Pycelle said it could not possibly be her fault. Rhaegar thinks that this is how it is meant to be; the gods do not mean for him to have a brother or sister (or wife), and in many ways, that is a relief. If only Father could accept it, if only he would stop trying, and putting them all through this torture.

"Rhaegar, sweetling," Mother says quietly, "could you pass me the wine?"

It's a heavy bottle, but Rhaegar manages, and carefully avoids Father's gaze as he does so.

"You drink too much," comes a snide voice.

"No more than usual, dear," says Mother as she pours, and Rhaegar digs his nails into his thigh beneath the table as he listens to what lays beneath those words: _I drink less than you do._

"You drink too much," Father insists, and Mother pauses, before defiantly raising her glass to her lips. "It's not good for you. It's not good for us. I won't have my wife turning into a lush, not while I still need her."

"Do you need me, my love?" asks Mother. _You have your heir, what else do you want from me?_ Rhaegar feels a little sick. "Thank you. You're not typically one to show affection so unabashedly."

"Damn you, woman!" Rhaegar jumps half-out of his seat as Father smashes his mug upon the table, wine spilling everywhere, ruining the sizzling pig by his elbow. "I swear, if you weren't my sister I'd have your head for killing my children, I'd have you fed to the fucking dogs, I'd fine myself a new wife who's not so fucking useless she can't even give me a son; if it weren't for our father–"

"Father!" Rhaegar finds himself crying out. "That is the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms you speak to, and my mother; I will not sit here and listen to you threaten and slander her."

It is a prince's words, a knight's words that spill from his mouth, and for a moment Rhaegar is almost proud of himself. _I am the dragon._ But then father's furious eye turns from his wife to his son, and Rhaegar shudders and cravenly tries to sinks into his chair, a terrified child again. _He will kill me. He will wring my neck right here over dinner._

"Such a perfect fucking prince, aren't you?" Father sneers, pouring himself more wine. "Always ready to defend a lady's honour. Look at you! Fourteen years and they're already writing songs!" From anyone else, such words might be a compliment. "Everyone says you've got what it takes to be a real king. Maybe you should try fucking her in my place, huh? You'd probably have more luck."

Rhaegar feels sick at the thought. _Is fucking a mother so different to fucking a sister?_ he wonders.

Mother stays quiet a moment, swirling her wine in her glass. "You'd have killed me if not for Father," she murmurs, and then sighs. "Well then. Thank the gods for Father."

Rhaegar reaches for the wine himself. He tries not to drink over these dinners, he doesn't want to need it to get through them, but he cannot help himself right now. _Father wouldn't really hurt us,_ he thinks, his heart still racing. _He might not be a good man, but he's not a kinslayer._

This is before the wildfire, before the massacres, before his mother screams in the night while her husband takes her by force. This is before Aerys, Second of His Name, is known to be as cruel as Maegor. This is while he is just a regular sort of cruel, the sort that's not so important.

Rhaegar drinks.

* * *

"How fares my brother?"

Rhaegar hesitates. The battle was a great victory, increasingly rare on their side, and he wishes he could share the happiness with his – wife? Is she his wife? The laws of gods and men seem quite confused on the matter. Still, he can hardly blame her for not being thrilled. "Alive," he reassures her. "I'd have heard if Ned Stark had–"

"I want to see him," says Lyanna, belly so curved he can hardly see her face. That's probably for the best. He hates the fury there is in her now. _She was so happy when I took her away, so carefree, so innocent. I have ruined this poor girl._

"He's in the Riverlands, Ly," he says, sounding like a maester dealing with a recalcitrant pupil.

"I could go to the Riverlands," she insists, and he sighs.

"It's not safe." _This whole war's been started over you, you think the great houses of Westeros wouldn't take you hostage the second you turned to them for shelter? You think a pregnant woman alone wouldn't be a prime target for the bandits who crawl out of the earth like worms? You think Robert Baratheon would welcome you back with open arms if you told him you'd left him for another man and brought his bastard in your belly?_ "I have to protect you."

"At least let me write to him," Lyanna pleads. Rhaegar shakes his head.

"I can't have them knowing where we are," he says, his pulse racing. "Robert would kill us all."

She scoffs. "Robert wouldn't hurt me–"

"Damn you, woman!" Rhaegar shouts at her. She jumps. "You don't know a thing about that man; you don't know a thing about men. If he knew what we'd done, you'd be a whore to him, nothing more, he'd slaughter you and your babe without a second thought! Do you want our child smashed to death with his warhammer?"

"...I want to go home," she says, and she sounds so _young_ then that Rhaegar hates her for it.

"Really now?" he sneers, and then he hates himself. "I wouldn't have thought it. When I fucked you in that precious godswood of yours, you seemed quite eager to leave. Such a grand adventure, like a maid in the songs, running away with the handsome prince, except you're no maid, are you? There are whores who wouldn't spread their legs so quickly."

"You didn't complain at the time," she says.

"Well I wouldn't, would I?" he says. He hates the words that are coming out of his mouth, so cruel, so untrue, but he feels powerless to stop them. "I didn't make you come with me, no matter what Robert says." No matter what I let him say, so if he does find you he'll take pity on you. "You wanted this. You wanted me." She says nothing to him, and he feels so angry he could breathe flame. "You were just a little slut who gave it up to the first handsome man who gave you the time of day! Did you honestly think I wanted you for anything other than your cunt and womb? I only chose you at that tourney because you were the only girl stupid enough to fall for it."

 _Ly, I do not mean it,_ his mind pleads. _You know I don't mean it. I can't possibly mean it, that's not who I am. I love you, you know that I love you; in the eyes of the Old Gods, you are my wife. I should not say such things to you. Be angry at me. Gods, please, be angry at me, put me in my place, tell me what to do. I didn't mean all that, I'm just frightened. I'm always frightened. Say something._

He hears a sob.

She is hiding her face, trying to hide it, but there's nowhere to hide in this hot stuffy tower he's trapped her in. _No, she can't be crying,_ he thinks. That's not who she is. Lyanna is brave and reckless and strong, and far too proud to ever cry. That's what he loves about her. That's why he chose her.

 _That's who she was,_ Rhaegar thinks. But he has broken her, as much as he has ruined her.

"Ly – please don't – I didn't mean–"

"Get out," she says.

He hesitates, and then tries to reach across the bed. "I swear, I don't really think–"

"Get out!" He jumps a mile as she throws a flagon of water at him, glass smashing on the floor. _She'll kill me. She'll do her betrothed proud and wring my neck right here in our bedchambers._ "Get out, you sick bastard, get out! I hate you! I never want to see you again! I hope Robert kills you!"

He goes. It's the only thing he can do for her.

* * *

The sun is strong and his skin is burning, but Rhaegar doesn't feel it, too high on the thrill of the fight. He is the dragon, and the heat only gives him strength, rising up through the Dornish sands and into his body. His sword is nothing special, just ordinary steel, and get it blocks and deflects Dawn's strokes effortlessly. _I have not forged Lightbringer yet,_ he thinks. _Perhaps this is it._

Arthur, strong as he is, seems to be tiring. "Yield!" Rhaegar cries, triumphant far too quickly, since Arthur doesn't even hear him through the clashing and clanging of swords. But he will win. He must. _I am the dragon. I am the prince who was promised. I will win, I must. I must, I must, I must–_

Arthur's heel sinks into the loose sand and he loses his footing; Rhaegar's sword is at his throat in a second. "Yield!" he cries, for real this time. Perhaps it is not the most honourable victory, but it is a victory. "Yield, you have to yield, if you don't yield I could kill you–"

"I yield, I yield," Arthur says, chuckling, and then Rhaegar laughs wildly, not sure what else to do. Only then does he take the blade from his friend's neck. "Gods. You have some energy today, don't you?"

"It's the sun," Rhaegar explains. "The heat. It makes me stronger." Arthur gives him a strange look then, but Rhaegar opts to ignore it, because he hates that look (Arthur looks at him like he's mad). "Do you want to go again?"

Arthur scoffs. "Can I have five minutes to have a drink first?" he asks, pulling a canteen from his hip.

"In a battle, you can't ask for a break," Rhaegar says.

"Yes, but are we in a battle?" Arthur asks before pulling himself up and gulping greedily. "Here."

He offers his water to Rhaegar, who only then realises how parched he is. _There is fire in my throat_. Nonetheless he drinks, and slowly as his senses return to normal, he realises how much pain he's in. His skin has half-burned off in the sun. He ignores it. _I am the dragon. Fire cannot kill a dragon._

"I want to be good," Rhaegar explains, unnecessarily, and Arthur gives him another look.

"You are good," he points out. "Almost better than me, even."

"'Almost'? I just beat you!"

"By chance!" Arthur insists, and Rhaegar punches his arm, harder than he meant to. "Ow! What was that for?"

Rhaegar isn't sure. "I could be better than you," he says, grinning. "I could be better than anyone." _Because I must be; I am the prince who was promised, and if I am not better–_

"If you say so," Arthur scoffs, and for a moment Rhaegar is furious with him for not believing it. But he forces the feeling away. Arthur is his friend, it's not like Rhaegar could possibly expect him to understand. "I suppose in a real battle, a lot of it does come down to luck."

 _Don't tell me that_. "I'll prove it," says Rhaegar. "Bare your steel and fight me like a man."

Arthur sighs as he reaches for his scabbard, like a long-suffering inkeep's wife. "You know, you don't have to take it so seriously," he says. "We're just sparring."

 _There is no such thing._ Rhaegar says nothing and raises his blade.

* * *

Rhaegar always thought travellers who spoke of how cold the north is must be exaggerating somewhat, but now he feels like they were downplaying it. He shudders and shivers like a drowned rat, snow falling down his neck making him feel as wet as one, and he knows he does not look at all like a crown prince of the realm.

And yet, Lyanna still grins when she sees him.

He embraces her eagerly, feeling the firmness of her body, the muscle hidden beneath riding clothes, strong for a woman. "I missed you," he says, like they have met in person more than once before.

"You came," she whispers against his neck, "I wasn't sure you would."

He wants to say something about how he had to keep a promise to his lady, but the words die in his mouth. _Sweet Elia, how can I do this to you?_ But he must, for her sakes as much as anyone's, no matter how much she'll hate him for it. "I had to," he says, truthful enough for now. "We should go, Ly, we can't be seen."

It is only a few knights who wait for them outside; only men he trusts absolutely. They all think he's gone mad, and more than a few are affronted for poor Elia's honour, but they will still do as Rhaegar says. He is the prince, the heir to the throne.

"We should," she says, solemn, but she can't keep that up for long. She breaks into giggles and then leans forward to kiss him. Rhaegar cannot help himself; it is so cold and she is so _warm_ , and he pours himself into her, his arms tight around her waist, teeth almost drawing blood from her lips. He won't, though. He's not going to hurt her.

Somehow they stumble and lose their balance, find themselves falling onto the fresh snow beneath the great Heart Tree. Rhaegar immediately pushes himself up on his wrist, afraid of crushing her. "My apologies, my lady," he says.

Lyanna smirks at him. "What makes you think you have something to apologise for, my prince?" Her hand starts trailing along his chest. "What makes you think I didn't do that on purpose?"

He doesn't understand for a moment, until her other hand snakes around his neck and pulls him back down for another kiss, longer and surer this time. His body gives way on top of hers, but she bears the weight of him easily. She's strong. Before long she is unlacing him with giggles, and he knows she is a maid, and yet there is not a trace of shyness in her.

The Northmen used to have a custom where if a man and a woman lay together beneath the weirwoods, they were thought to have married in the eyes of the Old Gods, or so Rhaegar's read. He wonders if Lyanna knows that. He wonders if Lyanna knows if he knows it. He wonders if it's true at all, as southern words on northern men can be less than reliable.

Elia, he thinks as Lyanna takes him into her hand, shucks her riding breeches down around her ankles for him. His dear wife has always been so good, so kind to him, and this is how he repays that kidness, by dishonouring her with bigamy? Yes, if it is between that and killing her. But this is more than just finding some woman to bear him a bastard, it means something, he just doesn't know what–

He gasps as Lyanna guides him between her legs. She flinches a little, seemingly in pain, and Rhaegar wants to pull away for a moment. But she catches his eye and he knows she won't let him. "Go on," she whispers.

 _She is a nervous maid after all. She needs me to take control now._ Gently, he winds his fingers through her dark hair (though not as dark as Elia's), whispering sweet words as he slowly pushes his length further into her. She buries a cry in the crook of his neck, and it does not sound like one of pleasure.

 _It's too much. I'm hurting her._ But he couldn't pull out if he wanted to; her legs keep him firmly locked in place. And she is so warm, it is like she is burning on the inside, and Rhaegar, he is the dragon, he has always taken strength from the heat. He needs her. But he doesn't want to hurt her. He waits a moment, hoping she might adjust, and then reaches across her belly to stroke and rub her into pleasure.

 _A little higher, right, there you go, right there... Gently now, gentle, now faster, harder, go on..._ Elia's patient, guiding words come back to him as Lyanna gasps in his ear, bucks up toward him, and he can feel her start to shudder with pleasure like she did back at Harrenhal. _It was bad enough what I did there._ Slowly, Rhaegar dares to actually move, and the groan Lyanna lets out does not sound like one of pain.

As he fucks her, he makes eye with the Heart Tree above them. He shivers. _Do not look at me like that_ , he thinks. _She is my wife now. Your bloody customs say so._ But Elia, sweet Elia, what of her? Will she ever forgive him? Will he ever even see her again? He could not blame her if she left him just as he has left her, and took the children back to Dorne with her. _But Nyssie, my little Nyssie, if I never see her again – and Aegon, the prince who was promised–_

Lyanna digs her nails into his shoulders and moans. "Faster," she whispers. Rhegar obeys. _See, she enjoys it,_ he gloats, although he does not know who he is speaking to. _She wants it, she wants me. I have not forced her, I am not Maegor the Cruel, I am not Aegon the Unworthy, I am not my father. I am the dragon. Aegon the Conqueror had two wives, didn't he? One for the Old Gods, and one for the new. And neither of mine is my sister._

He finishes faster than he wishes – it has been awhile since he's lain with a woman like this. Lyanna sounds almost disappointed when he pulls himself out. He wants to use his mouth on her, to service his new wife like she deserves, but when he sees her maidenblood spilling onto the snow he feels slightly sick. _I didn't want to hurt you._ He highly doubts she would appreciate it if he vomited onto her cunt, so instead he settles for finishing her off with his hand, thumb rubbing her nub of pleasure and two fingers pushing his seed in deeper.

When she comes, she cries out loud enough to wake the gods, and despite how important it is they not get caught Rhaegar can't bring himself to hush her. _Let her wake the gods. I am the dragon, what can the gods do to me?_ Durran Godsgrief seduced a god's daughter and stole her, went to war with the heavens, and he got Storm's End out of the bargain. He wonders what Robert Baratheon would make of that.

Once they're finished he is cold again. But it doesn't matter; soon they'll be out of the North, and onto the hot sands of Dorne (it almost feels cruel, taking his new wife to his old one's homeland, but there is no-one he trusts to keep her safe more than Arthur). He stands and offers a hand to help her up, and she takes it, before they both redress themselves awkwardly.

"So. And now we go?" she asks.

"And now we go."

* * *

He's groggy when he's woken in the early morning, but when the serving boy apologetically explains why, he only wonders why he wasn't woken sooner.

It must be a funny sight, the Prince of Dragonstone hopping along in one shoe, desperate to get to his wife's chambers in time, but it doesn't matter, he needs to be there. He needs to be there now.

Once he reaches her, however, no-one seems as excited as him. "Your Grace," says the Maester, wiping his brow with exhaustion, and Rhaegar knows he's learnt the name but he cannot remember it right now, "forgive us, we would have woken you earlier, but it's been – we've been very busy–"

"That's quite alright," Rhaegar dismisses the man, looking over his shoulder to where Elia lies surrounded by handmaidens, oddly quiet for a woman giving birth. "How is she?"

The Maester sighs heavily. "Not well, I'm afraid," he says. "The birth so far has been... difficult." A chill runs down his spine, and just then Elia lets out a wail of pain – but not high and shrill like you'd think a woman in the birthing bed would, not like Mother did when she brought Viserys to the world, but like Mother did when Father... "I'm afraid you might have to prepare yourself for the worst, Your Grace."

Rhaegar is frozen for a second. "No," he spits out. "I will not." _I won't have her die bearing my babe, I can't._ "Listen to me, I will not have her die. If she does, I will – I will–"

 _I will have you flung from the castle walls and onto the rocks below. I will have you hunted with dogs like a wild boar. I will have you burned alive with wildfire._ But no, Rhaegar wouldn't do any of those things – the man is just a humble Maester, he is doing his best, and Rhaegar wouldn't punish him for being unable to break the gods' will. That's what Father would do.

"...Just do all you can for her," he says, sighing in defeat, and some of the fear clears from the man's eyes – but not enough.

"Of course, Your Grace."

The birth takes two days, and Rhaegar barely leaves the chambers, sleeping on the floor when he can no longer repress the need. He thinks Elia's slipped away at least twice. After awhile, it is hard to tell what happens in front of his eyes and in his nightmares apart, it is all so similar. He does not think to eat while he waits, though after the fifteenth hour one of the serving maids comes and shoves bread beneath his nose, for it is in no-one's interest to have the heir to the throne starve himself. Rhaegar eats it, although he can barely keep it down.

After the fiftieth hour, at the break of dawn, the babe finally comes. Rhaegar holds his breath, and for a moment is so sure they will pass him a corpse, something tiny grey and dead. That's what happened whenever Mother had a birth last this long.

He hears a cry.

The room bursts into delighted noises, laughs and sighs of relief, and Rhaegar jumps to his feet. "She's alright, Your Grace," says the Maester, sounding on the edge of tears. "A girl. A healthy little baby girl."

"Let me see." Rhaegar pushes through the crowd and sees his babe in a handmaid's arms, the cord still not cut. The sight takes his breath away. The girl is tiny, red and screaming, blood covering Elia's dark Dornish skin. And she's _perfect_.

"Can I – can I hold her?"

He asked that when Viserys was first brought to court. Father slapped him. "Of course, Your Grace," says the maester, and as soon as the cord is cut and she is wrapped in her swaddling clothes, Rhaegar's daughter is passed to him. She's still crying. Rhaegar clutches her tight to his chest, but that does stop her.

"She wants her mother," he realises, and looks across the bed to Elia, laying asleep in a pool of blood. He hopes she's just asleep. "Elia!" he cries out, and she stirs slightly. "Elia, wake up! Elia, look at our girl! Wake up!"

He pushes the babe in front of her, and she just barely musters the strength to open her eyes. "A girl," she whispers, the Rhoynish note in her voice seeming stronger for how softly she speaks. "My apologies, Your Grace. I did not give you the heir you were hoping for."

"Damn you woman, do you think I give a fuck about that?!" Rhaegar asks. "Just look at her. _Look at her_. She's perfect."

He should care. He remembers what happened last time a king chose his daughter to sit the Iron Throne. But it does not matter, not now. They can have a son later, can't they?

Elia's eyes are drifting closed again. "Elia!"

"Your Grace, your wife is very tired," says the Maester. "We ought to let her rest."

Rhaegar turns to glare at him. "Let her die, you mean," he says, and the man flinches. Rhaegar feels guilty. He didn't mean that. Elia groans again. "Elia, listen to me," he turns back to her. "You cannot die. As your prince and future king, I forbid it."

She cracks open an eye again, and chuckles weakly. "I shall do my best, sweetling."

"Come now, don't speak like that," he pleads. "We still need to name her. What did you want to call her?"

He thought Elia might want to give their child some Dornish name. "I had hoped to give you a son with your name," she sighed. "Now, I am not sure."

"...Rhaenys, then," Rhaegar says. _Visenya goes first_ , he thinks idly, but it does not matter. "Our little Nyssie. Come on, Elia, you have to live if she has a name."

He realises how stupid that is, and then there is a hand gently guiding him away. "Come now, Your Grace, let her rest. There is nothing you can do for her now." The man is right, there is nothing Rhaegar can do now. But he will not let her die bearing his babe. He can't.

Rhaegar leaves the room with his daughter still in his arms, torn between joy and grief, not sure if he'll ever see his wife again. He should not care at the moment, but somehow when he looks into his daughter's eyes there is a thought at the back of his mind: _one down_.


	2. The Blessed

**ii. the Blessed**

He lays his head in Lyanna's lap, still kneeling on the floor, and she strokes his hair softly while she gets her breath back. He meant to lay with her properly tonight, because he must get her with child soon if she is not already, but tonight his flesh failed him. When he saw her at Harrenhal with her savage grin and men's armour, he thought he might never go soft again, and yet since they've reached this tower bringing himself to her bedchamber has become more and more difficult. He was so embarrassed, but she merely giggled and suggested he use his mouth instead.

"Rhaegar?" she asks when she catches her breath and finds he still has not spoken, nor moved. "Are you alright down there?"

"Fine," he murmurs into her thigh. His knees will lock like this, he should go lie on the bed and get some sleep, but he just can't bring himself to stand. He's so tired. Why is he so tired now?

Lyanna seems puzzled. "Are you going to fall asleep there then? Use me as a pillow? Should I tell you a story?" She pauses. Frankly, Rhaegar thinks that sounds like a wonderful suggestion. "I should tell you one of Nan's stories, that'd wake you up. She never was any good at getting us to sleep."

Rhaegar looks up, bleary-eyed. He feels like he should smile, but it won't come to his lips. "What sort of story?" he asks.

Lyanna seems bemused, but she shrugs. "There were a lot of them," she says. "I always liked the one about the Night's King."

"The Night's King." The words feel like a drink, unfamiliar, but cool, soothing, refreshing, on his tongue. It is hot in Dorne, and the sun sets so late. He did not think of that before he came here.

"One of the old Lord Commanders of the Night's Watch." Lyanna smiles as she offers a hand to help him up, and Rhaegar takes it. "No-one's sure who he was before the Watch. Maybe a Bolton, or an Umber. Or a Stark." Rhaegar perches on the edge of the bed, still holding her hand. "He met a woman beyond the wall. Not so unusual, but this wasn't just some wildling, oh no. This was a beauty of some other world, a beauty of death and cold. Her hair were as white as the snow, and her eyes blue, terrifyingly blue." Rhaegar's own indigo eyes go wide as he listens, and Lyanna tucks a lock of his silver hair behind his ear. "He knew he shouldn't, but he loved her. Loved her more than anything he'd found in the realms of the living. He took her to wife, took her back to the Wall built to defend the realm from the likes of her. Made her his queen. Some even say she bore his children."

"Do they," Rhaegar murmurs as he crawls beneath the sheets, not letting himself drift too far from her. Even here in the blazing Dornish sun, Lyanna's touch is cool.

"Of course, the way the tale ends is less romantic," says Lyanna, winding herself around his back. "The kings of men slew them both, and when they learned the Night's King had taken the Others as his gods, they wiped all mention of his name from the history books."

But it is no use; Rhaegar has already drifted off to sleep.

* * *

Rhaegar has always liked Tywin Lannister. You would not think it, the sweet, gallant, dashing prince with his silver harp and the stern, cold, ruthless Hand of the King – he's sure the admiration is not returned. Still, for all Lord Tywin's faults, he is a straightforward man. That is not to say he is honest, but while he would lie to you in a heartbeat if it would accomplish his goals, he would not just to spite you. There is not a drop of mercy in him, not since Lady Joanna passed away (Rhaegar tries not to think about Lady Joanna), but in some ways that is also refreshing. You need not wonder where you stand.

He is meant to marry Lord Tywin's daughter. He is not meant to know that yet, as Father hasn't told him, but the gossip is everywhere. Everyone speaks most highly of the young Lady Lannister's beauty, even when she has yet to reach her eleventh nameday; indeed, they speak of little else. _Imagine how lovely the babes will be!_ the smallfolk sigh. _Silver and gold, emerald and amethyst._

Father does not watch him carefully at the Tourney; he is far too preoccupied with his second son who they all celebrate. Rhaegar is pleased for him. He acquits himself well in the tourney, as he is expected to, forcing one man after another off his horse. The crowd gasps and sobs and cheers his name, and he barely notices. Some of these men just freeze as he rides toward them, like they cannot believe he is real, that the famous Prince Rhaegar is about to cross lances with them. He will forget all their faces by the end of the day.

When Arthur finally knocks him from his saddle, he imagines how the crowds would gasp if he split his head open on that rock over there.

It is easy for little Cersei to find him, mingling with the servants and smallfolk behind the stands. Father is not watching. He almost doesn't see her, such a small girl surrounded by grown men, but if she is at all intimidated she doesn't look it. "Your Grace," she says, her hand tugging on his sleeve brazenly. _Lord Tywin's daughter or not, Father would kill you for that._ He'd probably do it especially for Lord Tywin's daughter. But Rhaegar is not Father.

"Lady Lannister," he whispers so as not to draw too much attention to her, although her bright crimson gown probably makes that pointless. "What are you doing here?"

She raises an eyebrow. "I could ask the same of you."

"It isn't safe." He takes her by the hand quickly and leads her away; he will not have the Warden of the West knowing Rhaegar let his daughter go unaccompanied among commoners, among people who could do anything to her. "You shouldn't run off unaccompanied like that; what will your father think?"

"I'm sure my father will be glad I took the initiative to come meet you," she says, smiling to herself. "We are to be wed soon, he says."

"Betrothed." Hopefully Father will not force him to take this poor girl to bed until she is of age, although he would not put it past the man. He is so paranoid about Lord Tywin, and might want to lock him under key as soon as possible. "But it's all rumour and gossip anyway."

"Oh, is it?" The girl bats her emerald eyes at him. No, not emerald. "Shame. Could we stop for a moment, my prince? I'm terribly thirsty. Do you have water with you?"

He does; he makes a point of carrying it at Tourneys, since the last time he forgot and almost fainted in the stands (and Father laughed at his son swooning like a maiden). He pauses and hands her his canteen, and they are surrounded by trees and deep in shadow. Cersei is a messy drinker, he realises. A drop of water falls down her neck and beneath her bodice. He looks away.

She dabs her mouth with her hand and passes the water back to him; Rhaegar moves to continue walking, but she does not follow him.

"Can we stay here a moment?" she asks. "The sun is hot."

Rhaegar shouldn't, and really, he didn't find it hot out there at all, but he supposes that velvet she wears is heavy. He pauses, not sure what to say, and she eyes him appraisingly.

"Jaime will be worried about me," she sighs. Rhaegar takes a second to remember. Of course, the girl's brother, Lord Crakehall's squire, the one who keeps going on about how he'll be a better knight than any of them someday. He's been giving Rhaegar suspicious looks all day, and cheered for Arthur louder than anyone when he finally unseated the prince. Still, Rhaegar supposes that's a normal enough way for a young boy to feel about the man who's going to marry his sister – little Jaime just wants to protect her, that's all. _Lucky they weren't born in our family._ "I was born before him, and yet he still treats me like a child he needs to look after."

 _You are a child._ Saying as much would be rather impolite though, and so Rhaegar says nothing. "Father says I am to be your queen," Cersei says. "And I'm glad. Everyone says how beautiful I am, how I will be an excellent queen. They say the same thing about you."

"If beauty were all it took to be king or queen, Westeros would have been ruled much better these past few centuries," he says.

That makes her smile at him. "How right you are, Your Grace," she says, moving closer. "Still. I think you will make a king worthy of me. Nothing like your ugly old father." For a second, Rhaegar lets himself be flattered. Then she recklessly grabs his hand, and presses it to his cheek. "Tell me, Your Grace: if I were your queen... how would you honour me?"

A dull horror floods Rhaegar's senses. _She is trying to seduce me._ Gods, what is she, ten years old? Did her Father put her up to this?

...What has he done to her?

Rhaegar pulls his hand away like burnt. "Your family will be worried about you," he says, and then leads her back to the Lannisters' stand, not speaking a word. Lord Tywin looks completely impassive, and does not ask where she was; Jaime's eyes narrow with anger. Rhaegar feels sick as he makes his way back over to the royal box.

That night, Father finally speaks of the prospective betrothal. He does not say nice things.

"The self-satisfied, double-crossing bastard!" Father screams, spittle flying from his mouth, and Mother keeps her glass of wine pressed close to his lips so it won't land in there. "Does he think I don't know what he's up to?! What that whore he's bred will do if I give her half a chance? I'll find my son's throat slit on his wedding night."

 _And then you would be rid of me, wouldn't that be a relief?_ It's stupid, what Father says; Lord Tywin is not fool enough to have his daughter kill the crown prince once she'd already married her way into being queen, but Rhaegar knows there is no arguing with Father when he's in one of his rages. He says nothing. He half-wants to run, but that will only make it worse.

"You! Fetch a raven," Father points at a scribe, and the poor man almost faints with terror. "Write to Lord Tywin, and tell him – I am not marrying my heir to a servant's daughter. Because that's what he is, he is the realm's servant, he is _my_ servant, and he better remember that."

"Father, please be reasonable," Rhaegar finds the words falling from his lips before he thinks them. But he must, because he is the heir, he is the reasonable one, he is the one who knows what a stupid thing Father does. "Even if you do not accept the proposal, Lord Tywin is the Lord of Casterly Rock, he is the Warden of the West, he is your Hand of the King, you have to deal with this courteously–"

His words die in his mouth as Father turns, his furious glare now focused solely on Rhaegar. _Stupid,_ he thinks as his blood runs cold. Right now, he feels everything he could not make himself feel at the Tourney, when men rode at him with lances. _There's no arguing with him like this. Why did you say anything?_

"You want to marry her, don't you?!"

Rhaegar takes a deep breath so he won't hyperventilate. "That is not what I meant."

"Isn't it?!" He's coming closer now, and Rhaegar just wants to _run_ , but he is frozen to the spot. "You don't want me to know what you've been up to behind my back?!"

Mother stays in her seat with her wine pressed to her lips, tears forming in her eyes. "Aerys–"

"Silence, woman!"

Rhaegar sends her a desperate look. _Don't get yourself hurt trying to help me. I couldn't bear it._

Father grabs his chin and yanks his head up to meet his eye. "Don't look at her! Stupid little boy, still looking to your mummy to protect you. She can't help you now." _No-one can help me,_ Rhaegar thinks, and it is almost a relief to feel so helpless. "Treacherous cunt. What's he promised you? He'll get me out of the way and make you king early, so long as you do as you're told? He'll even throw in that blonde bitch? Don't think I didn't see you before, boy, sneaking her off behind the stands and right back into her daddy's arms. Did he let you have a taste early, so you could see what you were buying? What is she, ten years old? You're sick."

"No, Father, I swear–"

"You're all plotting against me," Father snarls at him. "You, Lord Tywin, your mother. Little Viserys is the only one I can trust. You all want me dead."

 _Can you blame us?_ "I don't even want to marry her–"

"Why not?!" Father spits at him, squeezing his jaw tight enough to bruise. "Come on. Like you said, she's Lord Tywin's daughter, one of the richest, most powerful families in the Seven Kingdoms. And she'll be the greatest beauty in them once she has some tits on her. Every man in the realm wants to marry her, why should you be any different? Are you like uncle Daeron then? Come on boy, tell me, why wouldn't you want to marry that girl?"

Rhaegar doesn't want to let tears fall from his eyes, that will not make Father think any better of him, but he can't breathe. He cannot tell if the whimper he hears is his or his mother's. _What does he want to hear?_

"She – she frightened me."

It's not until the words leave him that Rhaegar realises how true they are. That stops Father. Slowly, he relaxes his grip on Rhaegar's jaw, as a savage, horrible grin spreads across his face.

"She _frightened_ you?" He steps back a good foot, and yet Rhaegar feels no safer. Father bursts out laughing. "Oh, this is priceless! Prince Rhaegar, heir to the throne, the warrior who knocked dozens of men off their horses, scared of a little girl!"

Rhaegar turns his face to hide his shame. _A blonde little girl, with eyes like wildfire._

Father is still laughing, and some of the servants are starting to laugh too, more from relief than anything. Rhaegar cannot fault them that. When he eyes Mother, she has finally set her wine back down, and is sighing in relief. "Write to Lord Tywin. Tell him that no, I will not betroth my son to his daughter." His face screws up in a mocking pout. "After all, I don't want my _little boy_ getting _scared_."

Rhaegar, sixteen years and utterly humiliated, slowly and calmly turns and makes his way back to his rooms. Once he's alone and safe, he crawls under the sheets, and sobs his eyes out.

Lord Tywin takes the insult as badly as anyone could have expected. He resigns his position and packs up his household, little Cersei screaming and stomping her foot as she's forced to saddle her horse. Rhaegar watches them go from his window, not sure if what he feels now is dread, or relief.

* * *

Once Elia can walk again they bring the Princess Rhaenys to King's Landing to be presented before the king. Rhaegar can think of nothing he wants to do less than subject poor Nyssie to his father, but he knows that he must.

When King Aerys spits _she smells Dornish_ , of course Rhaegar is offended at the insult – to his daughter, to himself, to his wife, to his wife's people. But he is also relieved. _He cannot touch her_. Of course, it's not that he can't touch her, it's that he won't, but for now it will do.

He says goodnight to his mother before he and Elia return to their chambers that night, and to Septa Ashwood and Septa Jude, waiting for their queen to finish the cyvasse game she is playing against herself. Once they're gone, Elia gets a puzzled look and asks: "Those septas, do they follow your mother everywhere?"

"Only to bed." Elia raises her eyebrows at that, and then Rhaegar has to explain. "Father, years ago after – they couldn't have another child after me. Father thought it was because she'd been unfaithful. The gods didn't want to let a bastard sit the throne." _I must be his son then_ , he thinks bitterly. "So he confined her to Maegor's holdfast, and ordered two septas to sleep in her bed." Elia looks horrified. Most people seem to think this one of the less mad things Father's done. It's certainly far from the worst thing he's done to Mother. "Stupid, I know, and the babes kept dying. But now we have Viserys, and so he'll never stop it."

"Oh," says Elia, looking over his shoulder. She has a gentle heart, and Rhaegar knows it must ache for his poor mother. His own does too, but he has lived with that pain long enough he barely notices it.

He thinks of Baelor the Blessed, who locked his sisters away so he couldn't be tempted by them. Because for a man to bed his sister was wrong, sinful, shameful. And what did that give the realm? Daemon Blackfyre, and a hundred years of pain. _You might have been blessed Baelor, but what about the rest of us?_

"Elia," he says, "if I put two septas in your bed to be sure you were faithful – what would you do?"

She seems bemused. _Would you do such a thing?_ her eyes seem to ask, and Rhaegar feels sick. No, he would never. He is not like Father. He is not even like Baelor, the Blessed, the Beloved. He is not mad. He knows he feels too much sometimes, and sometimes he feels too little, but he is not mad.

Then Elia smiles. "Your Grace, I'm Dornish," she says. "I'd simply fuck the septas."

He laughs at that, loud and strong. He is very fond of his wife. "Well, good for you then," he says, and she grins as he takes her to bed.

* * *

When Elia's belly swells again with child, Rhaegar is terrified. _You must_ , he reminds himself. _You need a son, you need an heir. And if you are not..._ He grows old. In truth, he's barely past twenty, but he grows old enough. Something should have happened by now. Three heads. He has always tried to make that part make sense, and he has always failed. Perhaps it isn't him.

He cannot tell how he feels about that. Perhaps he feels nothing.

Nyssie does not share his worry. "Is my brother here yet?" she asks, and she seems to just assume it will be a boy. Everyone assumes it will be a boy, and Rhaegar hates them for tempting the gods like that. Even if it _is_ a boy, there's no guarantee the boy will live. He remembers little Jaehaerys in his crib, the happiest babe you ever met, and how happy he made Father. He remembers being fourteen years and stupid and thinking maybe, just _maybe_ , this boy might make things right again, might make them happy again. He remembers when Jaehaerys died. He remembers Hanna, a disgrace to his mother's honour, but always sweet and polite and only seventeen years, tortured to death beneath the Red Keep. He remembers hating himself because he could not cry for his baby brother, not when he was too busy crying for himself.

He is there when it begins this time. He starts spending the nights in his wife's chambers, just in case, which reminds him too much of Mother and her septas but no-one else seems to notice the similarity. He does not lay with Elia then, he will not take the risk.

She wakes him in the middle of the night with a whisper. "Rhaegar, fetch the maester," she whispers. "The babe is coming."

Rhaegar almost faints with terror, but no, he does as he's bid.

This birth is even more painful than the last, and once it looks set to continue into its second day, the maester takes him aside and tells him he does not want to be present for this. The last time, he would have refused. He would have insisted his place was by his wife's side as she bore his babe, no matter what happened. But now, they tell him to leave and he leaves.

He waits outside in the windowsill instead, looking out onto the rocks below. Servants bring him his meals and later take them away again untouched. He tries not to think. Nyssie is the only person who can get a smile out of him, once she comes up and asks where her brother is, he was meant to be here ages ago. _Soon_ , he smiles and lies and promises her, and when she hugs him he wonders how he will explain it to her once her mother and brother are dead. He tries to remember how they explained it when Shaena was born dead, but he was already eight years then, so he thinks everyone just expected him to understand.

Half the week passes before Maester Dacton – that's his name – emerges with a sleeping babe in his arms. "A boy, Your Grace," he says. "You have a son."

 _An heir._ Rhaegar takes the babe into his arms, sleeping so peacefully you could think him dead, skin white and pale. When the boy opens his eyes for a split second, Rhaegar sees a violent Targaryen purple. He tries to remember how he felt when he first saw Nyssie, how perfect he thought she was. No-one else seems to share his opinion: the Seven Kingdoms are not pleased their favourite prince's firstborn was a girl, with dark Dornish skin, dark Dornish hair, and dark Dornish eyes. This boy is much more what they were hoping for. And yet, when Rhaegar looks at the heir he needs, all he feels is dread.

"And Elia?" _She cannot die. If she dies I will never be able to forgive the boy for it, and he is an innocent, he doesn't deserve that._

Dacton sighs sadly. "I will do my best," he says, and Rhaegar knows that is all he can offer. "But even if she lives, she will never bear another child. It would kill her."

Rhaegar nods. "Just save my wife." _Don't let her die just so I can have an heir._

The maester goes and Rhaegar remains, boy in his arms, still not thinking. He is not sure how long he sits there before he looks back out the window, and sees something in the sky. A red comet.

 _Born beneath a bleeding star,_ he thinks immediately. _It's not me. It's him._

Perhaps it is a relief.

Though he tries, he cannot stop himself thinking more. _The dragon must have three heads._ He never quite could make that make sense for him, although he tried. He tries to make it make sense for Aegon – yes, he is named Aegon; he is Aegon the Conqueror come again, he must be. Rhaenys, Aegon...

 _She will never bear another child._

Rhaegar stares out the window, and wonders.

* * *

He is to meet his future bride today. The time to break his fast has already come and gone, as has the time for lunch, and yet Rhaegar feels no hunger. Still, he must get out of bed. He must.

The servants come and tell him so, but he simply rolls on his side and ignores them, and he is the crown prince, they don't want to push it. _Father could get me out of bed,_ and then he imagines how Father would sneer, his son too lazy to even dress himself to meet the woman he will marry.

 _Why am I so tired?_ he wonders. It is not as if he dreads wedding the Martell girl. From all he's heard, she is lovely, and he's sure he'll enjoy being married to her more than he would have Cersei Lannister. It's not being married to her that makes him feel like this. It is the thought of having to wed her; the thought of having to go and stand in line and make awkward small talk with the woman he'll spend the rest of his life with, of standing in the great sept in the eyes of all the gods and vowing to love forever some girl he barely knows. _Well, at least she's not my sister._

"Are you still not up?"

Rhaegar turns, for a moment afraid it's father, because who else dares speak to a prince like that but a king? When he sees however, he almost smiles. "Jon," he says, because Jon couldn't control his tongue if he tried. "What are you doing here?"

"Looking for you. Everyone is." Jon sighs as he walks into the room. "Let me guess, you took your kingsguard out to go play your harp on the streets and make all the girls cry, and then they went and got you drunk again too."

Rhaegar shakes his head. He had meant to do that, once more before his wife arrived, but last night he fell into bed too tired to even sleep. Gods, why is he so _tired_? "Why do they cry?" he asks. Jon looks confused. "It's just a harp. I pull a string and a noise comes out. Any fool can do that. Why would anyone cry over it?"

"...Nobody plays it quite like you do," murmurs Jon, averting his eyes.

Rhaegar sighs deeply. "Everywhere I go, people cry 'Prince Rhaegar! Prince Rhaegar!' Butchers, bakers, septons, whores, everyone. They love me. They do not know me, but they love me." He pauses. "I don't know why. I've not done anything for them. But I am their prince, and because I am pretty and I've yet to start torturing them to death for my own amusement, they think I am perfect. They think I can save them all from – something – and I... I..."

He trails off, not knowing how that sentence ends. Jon looks like he doesn't know what to say, and then averts his eyes. "You need to get up," he says. "We don't want that girl getting a bad first impression or anything," he mutters, bitter, and Rhaegar gives him a curious look.

"...Come here, Jon."

Jon looks taken aback when he asks. Rhaegar still does not get up, and so Jon, hesitant, comes over to the bed and sits on the edge of it. Rhaegar tries to smile at him again.

"Lie down, Jon."

Even more uncomfortable now, Jon does, and he and Rhaegar face one another inches apart. Rhaegar feels almost like he's being cruel, but he _knows_ Jon, he's known Jon for years, Jon might even be one of the heads of the dragon and–

"You want me, don't you?"

Jon immediately looks away, and for the first time in his life, Rhaegar sees pure panic written across his friend's face. "I–"

"It's alright, I don't mind," Rhaegar is quick to reassure him. He didn't mean to scare the man. "I know. I've always known." In truth it took him years to put it together, not until he was at least thirteen and the marriage offers went from being a weekly to daily matter, but still, close enough. "You've known me for years, since we were children... and you've wanted me all along."

When Jon finally raises the courage to meet his eye again, he's squinting suspiciously like he senses a trap. "Yes," he says, gruff, "what of it?"

 _He does not trust me._ Rhaegar tries to smile again. "If you want me Jon," he says, and he takes the man's hand to lay it over his chest, through his white silk nightshirt, "then have me."

"What?"

"I mean it," Rhaegar says, and he could feel giddy at how bewildered Jon sounds. "I don't mind. No-one's watching, they're all off waiting for the princess. Fuck me, now, hard enough I'll feel it for weeks – leave me limping to the altar."

Rhaegar can _see_ Jon's cock jump at his words. And yet... "Rhaegar–" and he worries he has misjudged it. He remembers Ser Criston Cole, who Princess Rhaenyra threw herself and at left him so disgusted he went to war against her. So he said, anyway. "–your betrothed?"

"What, will I be the first Targaryen to cheat on his wife?" he scoffs.

"First with a man, maybe," Jon says, and Rhaegar doubts that's true, by sheer rule of numbers, but he supposes whichever ones did it previously were clever enough not to get caught. And then there's Rhaenyra. "It's meant to be wrong," Jon smirks bitterly. "Septon says."

"I know, I've read my Seven-Pointed Star," says Rhaegar. "It says how wrong it is for two men to lie together, and two lines later, it says how wrong it is for a brother to lie with his sister, how any children born of such a union would be abominations, should not be suffered to live."

Jon frowns, and Rhaegar knows he has said too much. He sighs and closes his eyes. He imagines what Father would think if he caught his son in bed with another man. _Like uncle Daeron_ , Rhaegar can imagine him sneering, like he did when Rhaegar was five years old with his head in books, which confused him then, since everyone said Daeron was a warrior, not a scholar. _Fuck him_ , Rhaegar thinks, and it's like a tiny flame being lit within him. _Fuck the lot of them. I'm the Prince of Dragonstone, and if I want to know what it feels like to be fucked, I will._

He opens his eyes when he feels Jon's hand laying across his cheek, gentle for such a rough man. In turn, he reaches out and winds his fingers through Jon's hair, red as flame, but cool to the touch.

"...I don't think you really want me to."

"Why would I ask if I didn't want it?"

Jon shrugs and chuckles. "Fuck if I know what mad things go through that pretty head of yours."

Rhaegar jumps away from him as if burnt. "I'm not mad."

Jon looks puzzled. "Rhaegar, I was only joking–"

" _I'm not mad._ "

A tense silence falls between them, and in it, whatever little fire Rhaegar lit in himself withers and dies, leaves only an even tinier pile of ash. He sighs and collapses back into the bed, closes his eyes again. No, he doesn't want to sleep with Jon. He just wants to _sleep_.

"You need to get up."

"I know," Rhaegar says, and he does not move a muscle.

Jon sighs. "So what, do you need me to dress you or something?"

Rhaegar cracks open one eye, and then laughs. "See, you say that as a joke, but it would actually help."

"Oh. Well fine then." Jon sits up, and he pulls Rhaegar up with him, keeps him still as he tears off that nightshirt and goes looking for the crown prince's fine tunics and coats, like little more than a bodyservant. Rhaegar feels cruel again, making a man who wants him and can never have him and yet loves him regardless torment himself like this. And yet he sits there, like a child, and a lazy one at that. Even Viserys isn't such a brat. But he is just so _tired_.

When he meets Elia Martell for the first time, he bows and kisses her hand and tells her how honoured he is to see her great beauty. He can tell she's charmed by him immediately.

* * *

"So, have you thought about who you'd like to squire for?"

Rhaegar grins up at his mother. "I have." She smiles back at him. He knows she doesn't take it seriously, no-one does, a little boy dreaming of being a warrior. _But I am the prince who was promised, so I have to be knighted first,_ he thinks. _And who wouldn't want the prince who was promised for a squire?_ Still, everyone thinks it's the right thing for the heir to the throne. Even Father approves – _about time he started fighting_. But Rhaegar will become as good a warrior as Father could ever hope for. _A better warrior than him_. Rhaegar frowns. That thought feels mean, and he doesn't like it.

"Well then?"

"Ser Bonnifer Hasty."

The smile falls from Mother's lips, and she reaches for her wine again. Rhaegar's confused. Did he say something wrong? "I'm not sure that's a good idea, love," says Mother into her glass.

"But why?" he asks. "I thought he was a friend of yours. That's what everyone said."

He's been asking around, asking the castle knights if there was anyone Mother might like an excuse to see. Mother seems so lonely a lot of the time. Ser Bonnifer's name kept coming up; apparently, he crowned her Queen of Love and Beauty once. They must have been very close for him to do that.

Mother smiles sadly for a moment. "He was, once." But then she sighs and puts her glass back down. "But your father wouldn't like it."

Rhaegar frowns. "Doesn't he like your friends?"

"I'm afraid not, no."

Rhaegar leaves it at that, then, but in truth he doesn't really _listen_. He can talk Father into it, he reasons, and tries to ignore that vague anxiety he feels at the thought of trying to talk Father into anything. Father will probably be a lot more understanding than Mother thinks. Every man wants his wife to be happy, right? Everyone says Mother looks so unhappy the day they were wed. Rhaegar half-wonders if she'd have been happier if she'd wed Bonnifer Hasty instead.

At the next tourney (Father throws them rather often), he goes looking for Ser Bonnifer. He's not hard to find, crowded around the banner of the Holy Hundred, listening to some sort of sermon. He seems a rather grim man, and Rhaegar wonders if he's really the right man to cheer his mother up. But he's her friend, not his, and she must see something in him. If Rhaegar gets to be his squire, he will probably find it himself. He must be kind beneath the stern words, for the Seven are meant to be kind. Perhaps he could be like another father some day.

Besides, it's good when a man shows proper respect for the gods. Father cares little for them.

"Ser Bonnifer?" he asks, and he feels like a shy child, but he is the prince that was promised. He will not buckle at asking an older man's attention.

It takes the man a moment to turn to towards him, and when he does, his gaze is cold. Very cold. Rhaegar shudders like the wind's been blown straight through him.

"Do you want something, Your Grace?"

There is nothing strange about the words, and yet– _He hates me_ , Rhaegar realises, and he doesn't know how he knows that but he does, he can tell. This man hates him, and he has no idea why. _He'd never want me as a squire._

"N-no, ser. Sorry." And he runs. As he goes, he hears one of the other men mutter _abomination_ , and the word keeps ringing in his ears.

 _Well, I will just have to find another knight to squire for then,_ he thinks as he makes his way back to his mother's side, but there is no joy in it anymore.

* * *

When he sees her walking toward him in her golden gown, on her father's arm, he thinks _she is so small_. He's always known she's small, born a month early and having never quite lost the look of it. Some use that to speak against the marriage, saying the Martell girl is too weak and sickly and will never give him strong sons. Mostly these are people who just don't like the Dornish. Frankly, Rhaegar thinks the connection between a woman's body and he ability to bear children is overrated, for his poor mother always had firm breasts and wide hips, and yet she suffered dead child after dead child.

As he wraps Elia in his dragon cloak, he feels massive, ungainly, and she looks like she's drowning in black and red. _I cannot do this to her,_ he thinks for a second.

But he must.

He kisses her to seal their union, although he knows he will not truly until he beds her. After, he whispers "I am the dragon," and standing in the Great Sept of Baelor, feeling flushed in the light of the Seven-Pointed Star, he's afraid someone might hear him.


	3. The Unworthy

**iii. The Unworthy**

The flame is bright, red and yellow flickering, a delicate point over the end of a candle. It's hot, of course it is, but it's under control, and Rhaegar does not have to touch it unless he wishes. It's what fire should be.

"Rhaegar, sweetheart, Nyssie won't go to bed, she says she can't find Balerion, could you – what are you doing?"

He does not pull his hand away as he looks up and sees his wife in their doorway, watching him stick his hand through a flame. "Conducting an experiment," he explains. He remembers he thought of being a Maester once when he was very young, younger than five, before he learned swordsmanship and books were his only love, and he wanted to be like uncle Aemon, who was always so good and kind. After mother bore dead babe after dead babe however, he knew that dream was a folly.

Elia's eyes are wide as she watches him, slowly shutting the door behind her. "Sweetling, you're going to hurt yourself," she says, Rhoynish tones coming out stronger when she's worried.

"I won't," he smiles at her. "It doesn't even hurt." He might be exaggerating; it does hurt, a little, but only that – any other man would have yanked his hand back in pain a long time ago. "I am the dragon. Fire cannot kill a dragon."

Elia curses under her breath. "You and your bloody dragons," she says, and he's surprised by what she does next – she charges forth and knocks his hand out of the way, hissing as her own hand grazes the flame as well. He looks up, shocked and concerned.

"Don't burn yourself, love."

She tries to glare at him, but he can see there's too much fear in her eyes for it to be very effective. "Rhaegar, please – I'm your wife, and I love you. What is this about?"

 _I love you._ Has she told him that before? He doesn't think so, he's sure he would remember that. Should he say it back? "It's nothing to worry about, dear," he insists, and offers out his palm to her. "Look. No burns."

She frowns as they both look back down at his hand. There _is_ a small red mark there, but it's not a burn. He's probably just flushed from the heat. _I am the dragon. Fire cannot kill a dragon_. For a moment he thinks of Aerion Brightflame drinking wildfire, and he wonders if Elia knows that story, but he shakes the thought away.

Elia sighs, slowly closing her small hand over his own. "Rhaegar, you're frightening me."

Rhaegar thinks of his mother, and the look of fear in her eye that was always there, but now she cannot even pretend to hide. His heart aches. "I'm sorry," he says, his stomach churning. "I didn't mean to."

She smiles and shakes her head. "Nevermind. You've stopped now, haven't you?" She does not know what to do. "Come, let's... put Nyssie to bed. And go to bed ourselves."

He still feels guilty for scaring her like that, so he does as he's bid, telling Nyssie that you have to let a dragon free at night if you want it to grow up strong, but Balerion will come find her in the morning, he promises (his daughter's pet is no dragon, just a silly kitten, but Rhaegar can't fault a little girl for pretending). When Elia leads him back to his rooms, her nerves seem to be soothed. But he wants to be sure. While she is facing away, he silently presses his delicate fingers forward, to tickle her ribs. She jumps and turns back to stare at him. "What was that for?"

"I wanted to do it," he smiles at her. When he does it again, she giggles and bats his hands away playfully. "You're cute when you laugh."

"Oh, are you a Dornishman now, charming me with your words?" The Dornish do love their sun and heat. He tries a third time, and she takes hold of his wrists with surprising strength and pins them by his wrists, before pushing herself up against him for a kiss. "Strange man. Very strange man," she murmurs against his lips.

 _There are worse things_ , he thinks.

She pulls his wrists until they both fall onto the bed, him on top of her, and she's so skinny he's half-afraid he'll crush her, but nonetheless the blood rushes dragonhot to his prick as he feels her arch against him. He moans into her mouth as she takes him in her hand, stroking him quick and light, teasing him, and it's not until she starts to push her skirts up and out of the way that Rhaegar remembers.

"Wait, Elia, no," he says, pushing her away, panic flooding his senses. "We can't."

She frowns at him. "I am your wife. And it's been months, I miss it." She's pouting now, and she looks so sweet when she does that, but Rhaegar can't give in, and damn him he was a fool for even coming to bed with her, what was he thinking? "Tell me, why shouldn't we?"

"The maesters," he says. "They told me, if you have another child, you'll..."

Elia considers this for moment. "If you're that afraid, you could simply pull out and spill on my belly."

He shakes his head. He's heard women say they did that, but found themselves with child anyway; Father's mistresses, most often, just before he had them beheaded so as not to let their bastards ruin his good name (back when Father kept mistresses, back before Mother had to bear the brunt of all his monstrous perversions). "It's too much of a risk," he says.

She sighs. "We need to have another child anyway. Didn't you say, the dragon has three heads?"

Rhaegar stops, his blood goes cold. "How do you know about that?"

"I am not as oblivious as you seem to think me," she says. "I listen to you mutter to yourself. I look over your books when you're done with them. I might not understand, but I do know."

No. He doesn't want to drag her into this. Logically, he realises that she is his wife, and his chances of keeping her away from it were always pitiful. But this can only ever bring her pain – bring her death even. "Elia..."

"Besides, we should try for a second son in any case," she continues. "One heir is not safe, you know it is not. There is Viserys, of course, but he is not a strong boy, and your father's sheltering will not make him any stronger. If something happened to both him and Aegon, you would have to go all the way to the Stormlands to find another heir, you'd pass the crown over to the Baratheons. Your family's legacy is worth more than that."

"But what if it killed you?" he asks. "What if you died in the birthing bed?"

"Then I'm sure you'd find a second wife, a stronger one, who'd be able to give you stronger children."

Tears spring unbidden to his eyes. He wants to _slap_ her, and he hates himself for that impulse. "Damn you, woman," he hisses. "Do you think you mean so little to me I would give up your life for a second son?"

He wonders if he would have done it for a first son, for an heir, for the Prince who was Promised. He supposes he almost did. Then his head hurts.

Elia looks up at him a long moment, and then sighs. "I think I am your wife," she says. "Women die in the birthing bed, like men die in battle. Do you think, if your father called the banners tomorrow, I would expect you to cower behind the walls of Dragonstone, just to keep you with me? No, I would expect you to do your duty. As I will do my own."

Rhaegar is horrified. He thinks of his mother, who has had her clothes torn off and her skin ripped to shreds a thousand times, and born it with little more than a bitter smirk and another glass of wine, all for the sake of duty. _I will never love her,_ he realises. _She is kind, and she is beautiful, and she is brave, but I will never love her. I will always be the man she married because she was told to, and she will do what she thinks is right by me until it leads her to her grave. How could I love a woman who would let me murder her for duty's sakes?_

"Come, Elia, let's not speak of this," he says with a shaky grin, even though his tears have yet to dry up. "If we – if we must, we won't do it tonight," he says, and when she frowns, he leans down to kiss and suck at her neck. She groans and arches against him. "You've missed pleasure, haven't you? Well then, let me rectify that," he says as he moves down over her body, until his head settles between her legs. He's gone completely soft in any case.

Once they are done, Elia falls asleep quickly, worn out by his attentions. Rhaegar is restless however, as he cannot make the questions flee his mind, questions of what he should, must do. He turns to look into the flame for comfort, but his candle has long since burnt out.

* * *

The man is just a poacher, not even really a man, not even twenty years yet. He says he has no wife or child, although Rhaegar isn't sure if that's true or if he's simply lying in case the king would track them down and punish them out of spite. It would be a terrible waste of time that, but Rhaegar wouldn't put it past his father.

The poacher awaits his sentence on his knees, looking less frightened than you might expect. He's probably already resigned himself to his fate. He looks less frightened than Rhaegar feels. _Mercy_ , he thinks. _Please, mercy. The poor boy is half-starved. Father never even hunts in the Kingswood anymore; too easy for someone to arrange an accident. None of us would have eaten that deer anyway. Mercy, please, mercy._ He wants to say all that aloud, but he knows that would only make Father's punishment even crueller out of spite. He can only hope.

Mother waits by Father's side as he deliberates with his pyromancers, face an empty mask. Everyone knows her fate waits in the balance also, at least for tonight.

Eventually Father makes a decision, pyromancers stepping back to reveal him once more, nails curled in on themselves, hair tangled around his legs, yellow teeth baring into a savage grin. He makes Rhaegar sick.

"Well, boy, I have decided on justice for your crimes," he says. "You've shown great bravery here today. I think I shall give you an opportunity: to prove your worth, to save your life." The poacher's face, already looking half like a corpse's, shows a glimmer – confused and mistrusting – of hope. Rhaegar shares no such sentiments, and Father's grin spreads wider. He looks like he's about to swallow them all whole. "A chance to test yourself against the champion of House Targaryen."

The court goes silent all at once, the sound of hundreds of men biting back their cries and protests. All of them know what this means. Subtly, Mother digs her nails into her thigh, face never flinching. She knows it better than anyone. Rhaegar looks across the court, but of course no-one will speak against it, no-one ever does, for Father could have any man who dared killed. Any man but one.

"Father, no," he says as he steps forward, and when that grin drops away as Father turns to give him a withering glare instead, Rhaegar wants to run and hide and cry. But he cannot, he must do this, for he is the only one who can. "I will not be party to this."

"I don't recall asking your opinion, boy," Father spits, yellow bile landing by his feet. "I am not dead. You are no king yet."

"As your son and heir, I beseech you: listen to what I say." He knows the words by rote, although he knows Father never has done, unless it's to do the opposite of what he's said. "There is no need for this. Cut the poor boy's head off and be done with it. Please don't be cruel."

Father sneers, and Rhaegar sees the boy's eyes go wide with terror as the throne room is illuminated green; the pyromancers have gone to work, and the poacher realises what the mad king's punishment for his crime is. "Are you afraid of fire, boy?" asks Father. "It is the strength of our house. The king must not be afraid to dispense a king's justice."

Rhaegar is not afraid of fire – real fire, pure fire, red fire. But Father's fire... "I am not afraid," he says, but he is, he's terrified. On Dragonstone, he tries to stay away from executions when they must happen, which perhaps makes him craven but he hates killing and he hates the thought that one day he might stop hating killing, and so he keeps away from it as much as he can so every time will be as raw and as real and as horrible as the first.

(The first time he killed he had gone to play in an inn in Flea Bottom, that everyone knew was a brothel as well, and Old Tess the inkeep tried to turn away a customer who refused to take a no for an answer. Tess said he'd raped one of the girls and beaten her so badly she lost an eye, and he laughed and said he'd paid so it was hardly rape, and if she'd only done as she was told he wouldn't have had to hit her. He laughed and laughed and did not stop until Rhaegar removed his hood, revealing the shining silver underneath. A sword was brought to him and did not know what he was doing until the man's bloody head lay at his feet. Afterwards, he stared down in horror, and Old Tess looked terrified. Arthur was with him that night, and another man of the kingsguard, and yet Rhaegar has never spoken of it to anyone, not even Elia.)

"You are," says the king. "That's all you are. The Prince Who Was Promised. You're just a scared little boy."

"Father, don't–"

"Father?"

Rhaegar looks up. There on the balcony he sees a little head of black hair darting around the crowd's ankles, tripping people over, little black kitten under her arm. Elia's supposed to be keeping an eye on her, but Elia might have suddenly been taken ill, as that's been happening to her more and more often as of late. She grins when she sees him, and she must not understand, she must just think the fire is a pretty colour. "Father!"

He tries to speak, but words turn to ash in his mouth before he turns back to the king, silently pleading. Father pauses a moment, then smirks, and nods towards his guards and then to the flames.

"Father, please," Rhaegar says as the poacher's pulled to his feet. "Please, no, not like this. Please don't do it, please." Tears stream from his eyes helplessly, and he feels like he's three years old again.

"I will not have my laws mocked."

" _Please_ ," Rhaegar sobs. "Nyssie's watching–"

"Good," says Father. "Time she learnt what happens to traitors."

Rhaegar stops. _He means me._ He looks up to his mother, whose face remains still, but who has started to shake ever so slightly. He looks around at the court, meeting the eyes of stony-faced men and women who weep more discreetly than he does. Help me! he wants to cry, but he knows none of them can, and it is not him that needs help it is that poor poacher, and his poor mother, who will suffer for the death of a man she's never met, and he should be helping them but he can't, he can't even breathe right now, and why can no-one _ever_ help?

He looks up at Rhaenys. _I cannot stop it,_ he thinks. _Forgive me, Nyssie, I cannot stop it, I cannot help, I cannot spare you this. I am so sorry I brought you into this. Forgive me, Nyssie, gods, forgive me–_

She looks scared, she looks confused, and she keeps looking back and forth between the poacher and the fire like she knows something terrible is about to happen but she really doesn't understand what. Suddenly, she's lifted up into the air. "Your father's a little busy at the moment, princess," comes a voice, young and smooth and cool, wrapped in a white cloak, and Rhaegar looks up to see Jaime Lannister, Lord Tywin's son, one of Father's stupider moments of spite, only seventeen years and tucking Rhaenys against his chest, shielding her face. "Don't look. Your father will come see you soon, but don't look."

At the very least, the man does not take as long to burn as some do. He's skinny, and so his suffering is over soon. Once you've stood there long enough, it's hard to see what was once a man in the flames at all, and it almost starts to look pretty again. Rhaegar hates himself for that thought. Once the wildfire finally burns out, there is only a pile of ash left, but Rhaegar thinks it will take longer to be rid of the sound of screaming.

As soon as he can he runs up to the balcony, grabbing Rhaenys out of Jaime Lannister's arms. "Thank you," he tells the man as he presses thousands of kisses to his daughter's hair, face still stained with tears and snot. "Thank you, thank you, thank you."

Ser Jaime looks uncomfortable, and Rhaegar understands, he knows that he's hysterical. "I didn't really do anything, in truth," he says, and Rhaegar remembers it is him who will have to stand guard outside his mother's bedchambers tonight, but give way for the king, for the queen is her king's property. Rhaegar almost wants to tell Ser Jaime he does not blame him for that, but he isn't sure if it's true.

Nyssie looks up at him, and then to Ser Jaime, still seeming horribly confused. It makes Rhaegar want to sob again, and he closes his eyes. "You must think me terrible," he whispers, not sure who he's talking to.

"Why in the seven hells would I think that?" asks Ser Jaime.

Rhaegar opens his eyes, and Jaime and Rhaenys are both looking at him awaiting explanation, so he supposes he owes them one. "He is my father," he says.

"That's hardly your fault," says Ser Jaime.

"I've not managed to get rid of him," Rhaegar explains. "I'm the crown prince of the realm, the heir to the Iron Throne, people think I'm their saviour... and yet I have not done a thing to stop him."

"What do you think I expect you to do?" asks Ser Jaime. "Even the crown prince can't just kill the king."

"Any man can kill the king," muses Rhaegar. "So long as he is not too craven to face what comes after." _Which I am_.

Jaime Lannister goes still, and Rhaegar is flooded with shame when he realises what a sort of thing he just said, treasonous enough that any other man would lose his head for it. "Your Grace," he says. "Excuse me, I have duties to attend to." Ser Jaime is little more than a boy, and Rhaegar cannot drag him into his pathetic fantasies of finally being rid of King Aerys. But Rhaegar didn't _mean_ it as a treason. It is not the king he dreams of killing. It is his father.

He takes Nyssie back to her rooms, and she seems quietened by the experience of the day. It's not until he's tucking her into bed that she asks the question. "What happened today, father? What did grandfather do to that man? Why were you crying?"

Rhaegar hesitates, and he wants to lie to her, but he doesn't feel like she would believe him if he tried. "The man... he was a poacher. Your grandfather had him executed for the crime."

She frowns. He knows she knows he never has poachers executed back on Dragonstone, not that there's much to poach on Dragonstone, but poachers are overwhelmingly starving men stealing game he wasn't going to hunt anyway (he hates killing), and so Rhaegar always has them sent to the Watch, where they will get a meal every day if nothing else.

"But why were you crying?" asks Nyssie.

"I..." Rhaegar struggles to answer. _Because I am weak and craven and after all these years have not learnt any other way of living_. "Your grandfather... he's sick, little Nyssie. Very sick. And sometimes, when he's sick, he can be very cruel. Crueller than a king should be. Cruel to his subjects, cruel to his wife... cruel to me."

Nyssie looks to at him a long moment, and then suddenly her eyes go wide and she clutches Balerion close to her chest. "W-what he did to the poacher," she stutters, "he – he wouldn't do that to us, would he?"

Rhaegar feels like his heart just dropped through his stomach. "No."

"Are you sure?"

 _He is no kinslayer_ , he would have once said, but Rhaegar knows his father is a monster, and he has no idea what he's capable of. _She smells Dornish_. Father would murder Nyssie just to spite him, and then claim the babe wasn't even his to justify it. "He wouldn't dare," he says. "He knows if he ever came anywhere near you I'd slit his throat myself."

Rhaenys frowns. "But he's your father."

"And you are my daughter; I'm sure if I had to make the choice, the gods would understand." In fact he is not sure of that at all, but it doesn't matter. Nyssie still looks unconvinced, and so he tilts her chin up to look at him. "Listen to me. You are my baby girl. I will _always_ protect you. I don't care what I have to do, what laws I have to break, what hells I have to condemn myself to, I _will_ keep you safe."

 _I sound mad, I need to stop, I'm frightening her,_ but then after a moment, Nyssie smiles at him. "I love you, Father."

He smiles back. "I love you too," he says, and he pulls her against his chest and holds her close, too close, he might be suffocating her, like if he can only keep her near enough no-one else will ever be able to touch her.

He holds her close until Balerion yelps and scratches him.

* * *

"So, you've got the babe you wanted."

The stink of vomit fills the room. In truth, Rhaegar's known Lyanna was with child for months, but she's finally admitted it to herself. He should be happy. _The dragon must have three heads_. They just need to hold on through this war, and once the babe is born, he'll be able to let her go home and make things right with Elia and–

But as he watches her be sick over a bucket in their tiny Dornish castle, panic rises through him. _I have a Rhaenys, I have an Aegon, I will have a Visenya,_ he thinks. _But Rhaenys died, she fell from her dragon and plummeted to her death, what will happen to my girl? Rhaenys and Visenya's children hated each other, they usurped one another, Maegor the Cruel was born of them, will my babes be the same? Will Lyanna's child plot against Elia's children out of ambition; will Elia's children plot against Lyanna's out of spite? The dragon must have three heads, what if those heads bite each other off?_

 _What if I have not saved my family, what if I have destroyed them forever?_

Lyanna groans as she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. "I could drink moon tea just to spite you," she mutters.

Rhaegar feels like he might faint from terror. _No, gods no, you can't; I need this babe, but I cannot force myself upon you – I am not Maegor the Cruel, I am not Aegon the Unworthy, I am not my father..._

She clearly sees the look upon his face, and after glaring at him for a moment, she calls her own bluff and scoffs. "Don't worry," she says. "I'm too much of a coward for that."

"You're the bravest woman I've ever met," he says.

"What, don't they have women in King's Landing?"

* * *

Rhaegar doesn't speak to his brother often. He wants to, but he doesn't want to visit King's Landing, and of course Father would never let Viserys go to Dragonstone. Even when Rhaegar is in the capital, Father does all he can to keep him away from his little brother, for he doesn't trust Rhaegar with his treasured second son any more than he trusts Rhaegar with anything else. _You really think me a kinslayer?_ Rhaegar sometimes wants to scream, sometimes wants to sob, but he knows only a madman would care what another madman thinks of him.

Still, their mother wants her sons to be as close as they can, and so behind Father's back she lets them meet, if only for a few minutes.

"Rhaegar!" Viserys cries as he sees his brother come through his door and wraps himself around his legs. "Where have you been, I've missed you!"

"I came as soon as I could," he says, ruffling his little brother's hair, although he knows it is not true – he could have visited the capital right after Aegon was born, but Elia was sick and Aegon looked just like a Targaryen and Rhaegar was terrified of what Father might do. "You know how Father is."

"Father's stupid," Viserys mutters, and Rhaegar and his brother might not have a lot in common really but they both agree on that. "You have to tell me everything alright, everything on Dragonstone, about the gargoyles and the merlings and if there are any interesting criminals you've killed–"

"I might not have time for all that, Vis," Rhaegar smiles, trying not think why Viserys would want to know about executions. The boy pouts up at him.

"You will," he insists. "I'll make you. If anyone tries to drag you away I'll have my guards hit them until they stop."

Rhaegar laughs. His brother is a spoiled brat alright, but he's rather cute about it, demanding and commanding like he's king already, like he'll ever be king. Rhaegar doesn't think his baby brother would really do what he just said, but he hopes the boy grows out of such words before the day he actually might. "You shouldn't say such things, Viserys," he says. "Being in command of men, any men, is a great responsibility. You should not use it just to make yourself happy."

Viserys pouts again and looks down at the floor. "Sorry," he mutters, finally letting go of Rhaegar's legs.

"That's alright." Rhaegar goes to sit on Viserys' bed, and thinks. He knows his mother wants him to be a good influence on his brother while he can, and an idea springs to mind. "Hey, you know what we should do?"

"What?"

"You should go out to the city with me." A pause, and then Viserys snorts with derision. Rhaegar frowns. "I mean it, you should. I'll find a cloak or some such to hide your hair. I'll keep you safe, I promise. It'll be fun! Come on, I'll even teach you how to play the harp if you like."

"I am a prince of the realm, why would I want to spend my nights with commoners?" Viserys sneers, and Rhaegar can feel his heart sinking.

"They are our people, Viserys," he says, and his brother looks dubious. "It would do you well to get to know them, what they want, what they dream, how they feel." Their great-grandfather Aegon spent a lot of time among the smallfolk, back when he was squire to Ser Duncan the Tall, and he is a last Targaryen king anyone says anything nice about.

"That's what we have a Master of Whispers for," says Viserys, and Rhaegar digs his nails into his thigh. He hates that eunuch Father brought over from Lys, who knows more than can be possible, and Rhaegar sometimes feels like the man must be able to read minds. Nothing frightens him more than that. "You don't need to concern yourself with their _feelings_. You're their king, they owe you their respect. Debase yourself to flattery and you'll never get it."

 _My father's words, from my brother's mouth_. "Compassion is not flattery," he insists. "If I do not care for my people, why would I even want to be king?"

"Because it is your birthright," says Viserys. "As are they."

 _What has that monster taught you, baby brother?_ "A true king does not demand respect, he earns it." Viserys scoffs, and Rhaegar can feel a strange mix of rage and grief swelling in his breast. _Perhaps I am too late. Perhaps he is already Aerys III._ "Come on, Vissy," he says, feeling uncomfortably like he's pleading. "Father never lets you out of this bloody castle. Don't you want to do it just to see the look on his face?"

"No?" Viserys sounds genuinely confused. "Father wants to keep me safe. Why would I want to make that more difficult for him?"

 _Father wants to keep him safe._ A sense of envy that he cannot help floods Rhaegar; he's never known why Father dotes upon his second son when he only seems to see his firstborn as a traitor waiting to happen. But that's not the point. "I want to keep you safe too," he says. "But you'll never be safe if you don't learn to be better than him."

"'Better than him'?!" Viserys shouts, scandalised, and Rhaegar jumps to his feet. It's not until he's up that he realises he's afraid of a boy no more than seven. "That's the king you're talking about; if you were anyone else I could have you killed for that!"

 _But you wouldn't, would you? Please tell me you wouldn't_. "I didn't mean that," Rhaegar lies. "I'm just trying to help you little brother, that's all."

"I don't need your help," says Viserys, and he does, Rhaegar knows he does, but Viserys doesn't. "I'm not going out and getting myself killed by commoners and I'm not disobeying Father and that's it."

Why can't Rhaegar just make him listen? His mouth quirks into a painful smile. "But you said Father was stupid," he whispers.

Viserys gasps at him. "He's still our Father! You should show him more respect!" Rhaegar wants to scream. _Why?! What has he ever done to earn it?! When has he ever been a father to me?!_ "No wonder he wants to make me heir instead; you'll never be a king, you'll never be half the king he is – ow!"

Rhaegar does not realise he's struck his brother until he sees the boy clutching his face, staring up in shock. "You – you hit me."

As the reality of the situation sinks in, Rhaegar starts to shake. " I – I'm sorry, I didn't mean–"

"You hit me!" Viserys repeats as he stands straight again, shock replaced by fury.

"Vissy, please–"

"Get out!" Viserys suddenly grabs a little clay dragon Rhaegar got him for his fifth name day off his bookshelf, and throws it at him. He barely jumps out of the way in time and it smashes against the wall. "Get out, traitor, get out! I hate you! I hope I never see you again! I hope Father kills you!"

Rhaegar flees, and as he does he has to make his way through the guards Father keeps on his brother's door day and night. He knows they know. And he knows that, even if Viserys does forgive him for this, they never will. It's not worth their lives.

 _I hit him_ , Rhaegar thinks as he runs through the castle with no idea where he's going. _Why? Because he didn't want to come sing with me? How could I do that? Mother trusted me. He's my baby brother, I'm meant to protect him from everyone, protect him from Father. But I hurt him, because he insulted my pride. I can't do a thing like that. It's what Father would do._

He wants Elia, but she's back on Dragonstone. He wants Arthur, but he's in the Kingsguard, he'll be with Father. He wants his mother, but he can't bear how she'd look at him if she knew he'd hurt her little boy.

It's Jon he ends up going to, and he's taking a late afternoon nap in his chambers when Rhaegar bursts in, but when he sees Rhaegar's state he gets up immediately. "Your Grace? What's wrong?"

"I hit Viserys," he blurts out, shaking and on the edge of tears.

Jon stares at him for a second, and scoffs. "Frankly, good," he says. "Gods only know I've wanted to do that a few times. The boy needs someone to smack him into line, you're just the only one who can get away with it, I suppose."

"No, no, you don't understand–" Because maybe Jon's right, maybe a slap or two won't do Viserys any harm at all, but Rhaegar can't be the one to do it, he _can't_ –

Jon frowns as he gets up and approaches Rhaegar. "What then? What is it?"

Rhaegar tries to explain, but the words don't come, and soon he gives up and collapses against his friend's chest instead. Jon jumps in surprise, but quickly brings his arms up to awkwardly circle Rhaegar's shoulders. "Hey, hey, it'll be alright."

 _It won't, it never is,_ but Rhaegar says nothing. Perhaps Jon remembers that day he met Elia, and that is why it is so awkward; maybe Rhaegar is taking advantage of Jon, or maybe Jon is taking advantage of him, but either way he leans against the man's breast and cries like a helpless child.

* * *

"You needn't run from me," he says once the knight tires enough that Rhaegar can catch up. "I know my father ordered you dead, but trust me, I have no intention of bringing you to his clutches. I only followed the order so he wouldn't send someone else, someone he could have killed for letting you go. You can relax, good ser."

The mare this knight rides finally comes to a stop, looking exhausted, and the Knight of the Laughing Tree turns to look at Rhaegar, although he cannot see anything through the man's plate. "Then why are you still following me?" he asks, muffled by his helm, suspicious.

Rhaegar hesitates. That is a good question. In truth, he was as captivated by the fight as anyone, this mysterious figure taking care of three men, or boys really, but bullies; boys who ought to be dealt with. It is rare enough that all the attention is on someone other than Rhaegar at these things, and it is something of relief. "I'll admit, I'm curious," he says. "What you did today was... impressive. I thought I might like to talk to you, that's all."

A moment's hesitation, and then the knight reaches up for his vizor, and tosses it aside with a clang as it knocks against his shield where he dropped it in a tree. Rhaegar sees a muss of dark hair emerge from the metal, which means little to him, but then he sees a fair maiden's face beneath it. He blinks. "Lyanna Stark?"

He's seen her before, briefly, at the feast last night. He thought she was pretty, but she was with her father and brothers and he had Elia by his side, so he forgot about her quickly. Like this though, in her warrior's armour and with her face red from battle, Rhaegar knows he shouldn't, but he can't help but think she's the most beautiful woman he's ever met.

She tries to maintain her composure for a second, but then she blushes and breaks into a shy smile. "Prince Rhaegar," she says. "I'm sorry we didn't get to speak at the feast last night. I saw you playing your harp though, you were wonderful."

Rhaegar hears that all the time, but somehow it feels more real coming from her, like she might actually mean it. Like she might say it even if he were any old singer, drunk and ugly and fat with half his teeth knocked out. "I'm sorry too, my lady," he says. "Although I am not half so wonderful with my harp as you are with your lance."

She blushes deeper. "I wouldn't say that Your Grace," she says. "And anyways, I am not as good with my lance as you are with yours."

Rhaegar flinches a little. "Maybe not, but I'm only good because I have to be," he says, and he knows that's not something he should let on. "I much prefer the harp. I've never enjoyed fighting like you seem to. That will make you a much better warrior than me, some day."

Lyanna still seems disbelieving. "I must admit, you seem remarkably unsurprised. I thought when anyone saw a girl in this get-up they might faint from the shock."

Rhaegar has to laugh. "What, do you think me so craven a girl in armour is all it takes to frighten me?" he asks, and thinks of Cersei Lannister only for a moment. "There are stranger things in the world."

She smiles at that. "If you say so, Your Grace," she says, and from beneath her the mare whinnies. "Should we find somewhere to sit and talk? I think these two are getting tired of carrying our fat arses around."

They find themselves among the trees, enveloped so thoroughly in the shadows that they can barely see one another, let alone be spotted by anyone else. Lyanna strips off her armour and wears only her smallclothes, which makes him blush, even though her northern underthings cover more than most lady's dresses in King's Landing. Lyanna is shameless, and she laughs at him. "I would have thought a handsome prince like yourself would have seen a thousand maids without their clothes on," she says.

He shakes his head. "Only my wife." Not that he's not had offers, of course; there have been thousands of them, from women and from their fathers, knowing all that can be earned from being the prince's (and some day, the king's) mistress. But all of them have filled him with a sense of dread; all of them have made him think of sweet Hanna, screaming and pleading for mercy as Father's guards dragged her off to the black cells. Besides, could he dishonour Elia so?

For a long time they just lie there, in the dirt and leaves, talking about nothing and everything, earth getting in his hair until it's almost as dark as hers. "I'm not sure why you're so impressed," says Lyanna at some point. "They were only three knights, and not even very good ones. You could have done the same thing in your sleep."

Yes, but would I have dared? "Because you didn't have to," he says. "No-one would have expected anyone to risk their life just to chastise three squires, and certainly no-one would have expected a maid to do it. But still, you went out there and did it, because you couldn't let that injustice stand. You couldn't let them get away with being cruel."

"It's not – it's not that impressive," Lyanna insists. It is to me. "I wasn't even brave enough to show my face."

"You know, somehow I can forgive you that."

She has a wineskin, although Rhaegar has no idea how she got it, and they share the drink as they lie there and talk. He has not eaten since the morning, and so he can say he is a little drunk when he suddenly pulls her close and kisses her.

He expects her to slap him, to push away and ask if he thinks she's a whore, and he expects he will be horrified with himself, that he will apologise a hundred times for impugning her honour so, that he will not know what madness overtook him. But instead she groans against his lips, and opens her mouth before pulling him closer.

Rhaegar is so stunned he almost breaks the kiss just so he can gape in shock, but that only makes Lyanna push in deeper, plundering his mouth with her tongue, winding her hands through his silver hair and she's greedy with him but he sort of loves her for that, and he can feel himself getting hard already, for it's been awhile – in truth he's been avoiding Elia's bed for fear he will forget himself and want to spend inside her, and for fear she will let him – and he snaps away with a spark of fright.

"Lord Baratheon," he says, for she is not his to take, she has already had her lord chosen for her as he has had his lady, and he knows it's stupid for him to be making excuses when he was the one who began it, but Lyanna simply scoffs.

"Robert can go fuck himself," she says. "He says he loves me, but he's had his way with every woman in the Vale and already gotten a bastard on at least one of them. Besides, could he really be surprised that any woman who got Prince Rhaegar into her bed wouldn't say no?"

Rhaegar almost shudders, but he knows she doesn't mean it like that; she means any woman in the Seven Kingdoms would _want_ to sleep with him. She presses her lips back against his and gods, he wants her so much, he wants her more than he can remember wanting anything in his life, but he knows that it's wrong, because _Elia_ ; he is not like his father, who must have fucked a hundred women and murdered half of them. It is wrong, it must be wrong, unless–

 _It is her_ , Rhaegar realises as she rolls on top of him, moaning softly as she grinds herself down on the swelling in his breeches. _She is so brave, so strong, so wild. She is meant to bear me the third head of the dragon._ It all makes perfect sense now; the gods sent him after her for a reason. He remembers the words he read when he was just a child. _He is the prince who was promised, and his is the song of ice and fire._ It must be, yes, it must be. If Elia can't...

He rolls them over, and Lyanna gasps a little but her legs spread for him willingly. Reckless and greedy himself, he presses his hand over her centre and feels the wetness seeping through the thin cotton covering her. She mewls and arches up against him, before grabbing at his prick, rubbing it fierce and hard through his silk breeches and Rhaegar has to bite his lip so as not to spend there and then in her hand. She is wild and she makes him wild; she is a wolf and she makes him want to be her bitch. He remembers what he once asked of poor Jon, on one of those days where he couldn't feel anything, but now he feels too much and he would like to ask the same thing of her, although he has no idea how such a thing would be possible. Once he would have asked Elia, but that thought makes his heart hurt and so he shakes it away.

Rhaegar did not mean to take this so far, he realises, and it seems like Lyanna did not either, for she breaks away, a measure of maidenly shyness overtaking her. "Your Grace," she says, "I am still a maid, I – I've never–"

He hushes her with a kiss. "It's alright, my lady," he whispers. "I will not dishonour you." _Not yet_.

She seems confused, but when he catches her eye to ask her permission to remove her underthings, she allows it. He pushes them to her ankles and she looks even more puzzled when he follows them downward. When he stops with his face above her wet cunt, Rhaegar realises she has no idea what he's about to do. _She's barely fifteen_ , he thinks with a pang of guilt, but his mother was about the same age when she bore him, wasn't she?

Lyanna shrieks when he buries his face in her, and immediately locks her legs around his neck to force him closer. It was Elia who taught him how to do this, for growing up with his mother and father the thought a man might want to use sex to pleasure his woman before himself was foreign to him, but he learned to love it, having her sigh and moan and giggle as he worshipped her with his mouth. Lyanna is different. She does not sigh and moan and giggle; she writhes, she wails, she screams, she sounds like she could not care less if every man in Harrenhal hears her. Rhaegar loves her for that.

She is still screaming when she finishes, thrusting against his face until he almost suffocates, and Rhaegar finds himself spending harder than he can remember in his life into the dirt. "Run away with me," he whispers against her thigh as she recovers, "be my queen." He cannot tell if she hears him.

After a moment, Lyanna speaks. "Princess Elia," she says, still getting her breath back. "You only married her because your father told you to, didn't you? You don't really love her?"

Rhaegar hesitates. In truth, he doesn't really know anymore. But he needs Lyanna to fulfill his destiny, and so he will let her believe whatever she needs to.

"I only married her because I was told to."

When the crown of blue roses lays in his lap, he tries with everything he has not to shake with nerves. He does not dare meet sweet Elia's eye, although more than anything he wants to turn and beg her forgiveness. _My dear wife, you've always been so good to me, and this is how I repay you. Forgive me. Gods, please, forgive me._ He will dishonour them all if he does this, but Rhaegar has learned, there are things that matter more than honour. My son is the prince who was promised, and I suppose that makes me king. This is my duty; the dragon must have three heads.

Some would say he need not do this, humiliate his wife so, that he could just disappear with the Stark girl without even speaking to her in public – but no, he can't have her just vanish and reappear with some bastard that could be his, maybe, but no-one could really tell. He needs them to know, he needs everyone to know. Rhaegar's always loved his stories, and he knows it will take more than a dalliance behind his wife's back to hatch a dragon. It must be love, the sort of things singers will write about for a hundred years hence. For her at least, it must be love.

When he lays the crown in Lyanna's lap, she seems more stunned than anything. She must have thought he would simply enjoy himself with her and then forget her. Everyone seems stunned, and Rhaegar cannot bring himself to look at any of them. He wants to just look at Lyanna, how beautiful she is, how strong, but he finds himself distracted. His eyes drift up to the royal box, where his father sits.

The man looks like a monster, hair and beard grown down to his knees, ragged and matted, nails protruding from his skin like talons. He is only here because he was told Rhaegar meant to use the tourney to be rid of him, and perhaps it was true. When Rhaegar whispered to Lord Whent that he itched for a tourney, the chance to fight again, it was with the fantasy that if he could only get all the lords of the Seven Kingdoms in the one place, that somehow, they would be able to deal with Father. He thinks Whent knew it as well; surely everyone knows Rhaegar doesn't really care for such things. But as soon as he was gone he realised how foolish it was, for even if every lord in Westeros chose his side, and Rhaegar wasn't sure they would, he had no idea how to go about deposing the king without simply getting them all executed. And so he went to the tourney like it was any old tourney, tried to forget he had ever dreamed something so stupid, and merely looked confused if anyone tried to whisper hopeful treasons at him.

Father looks like a monster, but he has done ever since Duskendale, so Rhaegar is used to it. It is the gleam in his eyes that is frightening, and it says _oh, the trouble you're in now. And they say I'm mad._

For the first time in years, Rhaegar's father smiles at him.

* * *

Once they finally reach the tower in Dorne, Lyanna wants to fuck to celebrate. Rhaegar can feel his kingsguard judging him, but he can hardly refuse. He and Lyanna are wild together, biting and clawing and scratching like both their sigils, but there is love beneath it all. They are not just a wolf and a dragon, they are people too.

After they're finished Lyanna is so worn out she falls asleep in a second, but Rhaegar, despite feeling just as tired, finds himself restless. He finds himself dwelling on Elia and Aegon and Nyssie and everything he forced himself not to think about the whole way from Winterfell. Lyanna is curled into his side, and yet she no longer feels as close as she did just a few seconds ago. The more exhausted he is, the less he feels like he'll be able to sleep.

Eventually he does drift off to sleep, but even when he does, he dreams. He's in the desert, barefoot in rags, sun-soaked sand almost burning his feet. Baelor the Blessed did this, he remembers, walked across Dorne humble before the Gods. The maesters argue about who really won Dorne into the Seven Kingdoms, one Daeron with his military prowess, another Daeron with his skillful diplomacy, but Rhaegar's always liked to think that really it was Baelor with his grand gesture. _And perhaps I have lost it again with my own._

Rhaegar trudges forward, parched, but he cannot give up. _I am the dragon. Fire cannot kill a dragon._ The gods want him to do this, they want him to get through this, they must.

He does not see the army coming until they are right behind him. He turns around and sees all the might of Dorne behind him, Nymeria herself at their front, ready to ride him down. _No,_ he wants to say. _I didn't mean to. I was trying to save her. She'd have gotten herself killed if I'd let her. I have to; the dragon must have three heads._

There's no time to explain though, there's no time to plead, there's only time to run. Rhaegar does his best but he trips over his bare and bloody feet, and the Dornish catch up to him in seconds. With no other options, no chance of escape, Rhaegar opens his mouth to scream.

When he does though, the strangest thing happens. No sound comes out, but instead, a flame comes out. Nymeria jumps back, startled, and when one of her soldiers is brave enough to move toward him, Rhaegar simply breathes again, and the man barely escapes before he's set alight.

Rhaegar laughs when he realises his victory, little drops of fire spitting off his lips. _I am the dragon. Fire cannot kill a dragon._ They're all staring at him like he's a monster, but it doesn't matter, all that matters is they cannot touch him. No-one can touch him: not the Dornish, not the gods, not his father, no-one. Not if he could burn them alive if they came anywhere near him. No wonder Father loves his pyromancers so. _I can take a second wife, like Aegon the Conqueror. I can take other men's brides, like Maegor the Cruel. I can murder my father, like Aegon the Unworthy. Who is going to stop me?_ Rhaegar smells roast suckling pig, freshly killed, and thinks someone must be preparing a feast for the king he will someday be.

Then he feels a pain in his hand.

He looks down and realises in horror that it was not pig he smelt – but he read once than human flesh tastes something like pork. No, it cannot be, he thinks as he watches his hand catch alight, the flame running down his arm. _I am the dragon. Fire cannot kill a dragon._ His rags are burnt away in seconds and the pain goes from a sting, to a burn, to the rawest agony he's ever felt. He looks up at Nymeria, pleading for help, but it is sweet Elia watching him now and she _smirks_ to see him in so much pain. The flame starts to turn green. Rhaegar screams, and when he does more fire spills from his mouth until he is covered in it, until he can't see another thing. Fire cannot kill a dragon, but perhaps it does not need to kill him, perhaps it can just keep him there in agony, forever.

He screams as he burns, and he burns as he screams.


	4. The Realm's Delight

**iv. the Realm's Delight**

Rhaegar still reads. Father likes it even less as he grows older, says they should be sending him off to squire about now, before they mould him into a weakling. Rhaegar isn't a weakling, he's a healthy boy of his age, but he just doesn't like fighting. Trying always makes him afraid someone will hurt him, or that they'll hurt him. Battles he reads about in history are different, they're grand and heroic, but the reality makes him feel a little sick. He wonders what it is Father's so enthusiastic about.

It's old, the book he reads today, written by a Maester not quite three hundred years ago, near the end of Aegon's reign. A history of the Targaryens, although a somewhat dubious one, between their arrival in Westeros and their conquest of it. Some say many of the passages were copied whole from _Signs and Portents_ , although Rhaegar doubts that.

Mother is ill, and Rhaegar tries to distract himself from the fact. She has not really recovered from Shaena – from the girl born dead; it is probably best not to get too attached – and Father's constant suspicious glare does not help. Father was kind about it once, Rhaegar remembers, but he has lost patience and thinks Mother must be doing something to ruin his seed.

His eyes glaze over the words a bit, as he's not been sleeping well, and so he finds himself repeating the same passages over and over: _Born among salt and smoke, beneath a bleeding star._ He yawns and rubs his eyes. _His is the song of ice and fire. Born among salt and smoke..._

A prickle runs down the back of his neck as the words start to actually sink in.

 _Don't be stupid. Imagine what Father would say if you thought you were_ – but the smoke; everyone always goes on about Summerhall, none of them will let him forget he was born the day so many died. The realm that wanted to weep for joy wept in grief instead. Fire, it always comes back to the fire.

And grandfather. Rhaegar barely remembers his grandfather anymore, but he remembers that last conversation, if only for how Father reacted. _You were worth it. Everything. My father, my daughter, my son... you were worth it._ The perfect prince, grandfather called him. He wasn't just talking about Rhaegar. He's not that important. But the prince who was promised...

It's him. It _must_ be.

* * *

 _Of course the damn spider knows where I am,_ Rhaegar thinks bitterly as he takes the letter. He's always hated his father's bloody eunuch, never trusted him, always felt like the man wasn't just reading his letters, but reading his mind somehow. He did all he could to be sure no-one would find them, but Rhaegar is just a storybook prince, and not the Master of Whispers. There's no way he could have ever outwitted the man, he was a fool to think he could. But Lord Varys did not sell him out to Father, and that bewilders him. He is Father's man, isn't he?

All that is of no consequence when he actually reads what Varys has written. _Brandon Stark... rode south to find you..._ Rhaegar wants to vomit all over the words. _And his father... burnt with wildfire, and strangled..._ No, no, no. Rhaegar is a fool, he has always been a fool. Why didn't he see this coming? He made them all think he had kidnapped Lyanna and locked her up as his personal rape slave; did he think her father and brothers would simply accept that just because he's the prince? Mayhaps Crownlands men would, out of sheer ambition, but he knows the Northerners are a proud, honourable, protective lot – Ly taught him that. He must have known they'd come rescue her. Why didn't he _think_?

But why would Father kill them? Father hates him. You'd think he'd be glad for the chance to be rid of him.

 _Father doesn't care why he kills, he just likes to do it._ Rhaegar shudders; he can only imagine what the mad king would have done to his wife after taking the lives of the Warden of the North and his heir. His father by law, mayhaps, and his brother. How will he tell Lyanna?

He didn't even plan it, not really. He had meant to ride north like he used to ride to Summerhall: to be alone with his feelings, to see if he could find the beautiful, wild woman he'd met in the snows and frosts of her home. But once he'd got there, he'd known he could not leave without her. He felt too much. He felt too much and thought too little, and now her father and brother are dead.

"Rhaegar?" she enters the hall to find him staring over the letter, his kingsguard in an awkward circle around him. "What's wrong?" He looks up at her and his mouth falls open, struggling for an explanation, but there's nothing he can say and so he shuts it again. Lyanna looks at the letter, and frowns. "Has your father found us?"

He shakes his head. _Would that he had. We might deserve it_. "No. Ly... I don't know how to tell you this..."

Her eyes grow wider, colder. She is afraid. Of course she is too proud to show it. "Well, I always found talking a good way to tell people things."

Rhaegar sighs. "Lyanna... your brother... he rode to King's Landing, when he found out you'd – I think he thought I'd..." _done everything I wanted them to think I'd done, gods help me._ "He rode into the capital demanding I come out and die. And so my father took him prisoner."

Lyanna stares on in horror for a moment, then scrunches her eyes shut. "Oh _Brandon_ ," she says, and Rhaegar knows what she's thinking – she should have seen this coming too. Then her eyes pop back open. "Wait, prisoner? So he's alright?"

The desperation in her voice makes him want to sob. "No. Ly – my father – he ordered your father to the capital as well."

"No–"

"I'm sorry. But he – he killed them both." He will not tell her the details, the flame and the sword, and Brandon strangling himself to save his father. He will spare her that at least. However there is more he cannot spare her. "Now... your other brother is at war, Lyanna, him and Lord Arryn and Lord Tully and Lord Baratheon as well. They mean to be rid of the mad kings once and for all."

For a long moment she just stares, taking this all in. But then Rhaegar sees her jaw clench, and the grey in her eyes turn to steel. "I need to go home."

"Lyanna–"

"I can stop this; I'll tell Ned the truth and it'll be fine, we can go home and–"

"Lyanna, you can't."

She stops in the middle of her rant and turns to look at him, squinting suspiciously. He forces himself to meet her eye. Why didn't he see this coming either? "I won't let you," he says.

" _What_?!"

He swallows hard; he can see the rage in her, rage ready to bloom into hatred. "It will do nothing," he says, and he knows he's rationalising pitifully, but it might well be true. "If we had learned of this before father – before – and you explained what had happened, perhaps, but now... the war has already began, Ly. Your brother and betrothed will not rest until they have driven my father from his throne and into the grave. You are carrying my child, Lyanna, I will not let you venture out into a warzone in a foolish hope and get yourself killed."

"Then send your guards to protect me," she says, and he shakes his head. It is not the war he is protecting her from, it is Robert Baratheon. Rhaegar can see him slaughtering the woman who's dishonoured him, and any man, kingsguard or no, who stood in his way. "He's my _brother_ , do you expect me to just abandon him?"

"I do not expect you to have a choice," he says.

Her eyes narrow. "What do you mean, I'm carrying your child?" she asks. "You can't know that."

"I do." _Because you must be, I cannot force myself upon you; I am not Maegor the Cruel, I am not Aegon the Unworthy–_

"So, what, do you intend to keep me prisoner now? Your little northern bitch to be fucked whenever you like?"

He closes his eyes. "No. I promise you, Lyanna, I will not share you bed unless you wish it."

She scoffs. "You think I'd _want_ to fuck the man who's father killed mine, who's now holding me hostage?" A pause. "So that's it, then. You'll let your family slaughter mine, you won't let me save my brother from a war nobody wants, you'll lock me up in the middle of nowhere, but because you can't bring yourself to actually rape me everything's fine?"

Rhaegar says nothing. "...You're as mad as he is," says Lyanna.

Once, he would have been angry at that. He would have screamed at her for it. He would have hated her for it. He might have hurt her for it. But now, he thinks she's right. "Probably," he mutters.

He does not act to stop her as she storms off. He knows she's not going to try and escape – Ly might be reckless sometimes, but she's not stupid; as good a fighter as she is she won't think she could actually win against three knights of the kingsguard. Rhaegar does not open his eyes once she's gone, for his guards are all still there, and he can't bear to see them judging him either. They will do what he says, but they always did what Father said.

"Do you hate me too?" he asks.

"I could never hate you, Rhaegar," comes Arthur's voice. "But I think you've done a terrible thing."

 _Of course I have. What king hasn't?_ thinks Rhaegar. _What choice do I have? The dragon must have three heads._ He tries to remember his grandfather, although it's been over twenty years and he was a tiny child; the man's face has long since fled his memory. His voice, however, remains. _You were worth it. Everything._ Rhaegar wonders how he figured that out. Maybe it was just what he needed to believe.

It is not until they're all gone, until he's alone in his grief and shame, that he opens his eyes and actually finishes the letter. The news he receives last is as horrifying as the first. _The Grand Maester suspects, although he has not spoken as such officially, that your beloved mother is with child once more._ Rhaegar's blood runs cold. No, no, it can't be, she's too old. But Queen Rhaella was young when she bore him, and is not yet past forty.

The dragon must have three heads. Himself, Viserys, and this new babe. It is him after all? Has he done all this for nothing?

He supposes he will find out.

* * *

Rhaegar wakes to the sound of pained moaning, smothered against the sheets. He frowns. He's heard that before, although he always wishes to never hear it again. Still, he forces himself out of bed. Better he gets there before Father does.

When he knocks the moaning cuts short, perhaps in fear. He coughs. "Mother?"

"...Rhaegar. Come in." He can hear the relief in her voice, and he does not hesitate, nor is he surprised when he sees the blood on the sheets, and running down her legs.

She stands by the side of the bed, staring down at the pool of blood – and then she turns and looks at him. "Help me hide this," she says.

Rhaegar does as bid, and the two of them strip the blood soaked sheets quickly. _I knew she was with child, everyone knew she was with child._ But no-one wanted to speak of it aloud, for fear of jinxing the babe. Not that it did it any good. Perhaps they could tell Father this was just her moonblood coming late, but Father's gotten so cruel to them now, Rhaegar doubts he'd believe it.

He's tossed one sheet into the hearth and is about to do the same to the other before his mother stops him. "No. We have to wait. Otherwise you'll just smother the flames."

So wait they do, in silence, and they're both terrified. Father could come at any time, they both know. Rhaegar is struck by how old his mother looks, face illuminated by flickering shadows, although she is not even thirty yet.

"Mother," he says, looking down to the blood caking on her legs, "shouldn't you – clean yourself?"

She looks down with him, and then smiles sadly to herself. "I didn't even think of that."

Mother excuses herself to her basin to wet a washcloth and scrape the blood away, and Rhaegar, once the first sheet is half-burned, is brave enough to pass the second one into the flames. A second after he does it, he hears footsteps. Mother looks up, frozen. "Rhaegar, hide."

"What? No!" He turns around, horrified. "I'm not going to just leave you with him–"

"Rhaegar, there's no time for this, do as I say."

He wants to argue, but his mouth gawps open and the words do not come. Mother paces across the room and opens her wardrobe, and Rhaegar climbs inside, and he should be able to protect her; he's been training for years, he's eleven and almost a man grown, and yet he is still a child, he is still _her_ child.

Once the door shuts on him another one opens. "Rhaella," Rhaegar hears, and Father sounds like he's just been woken from sleep, "what are you wailing about? I could hear your mewling from across the Keep."

Mother hesitates, and Rhaegar's heart thumps in his chest, before she answers. "Forgive me, Your Grace. A bad dream, nothing more."

For a moment, Rhaegar is stupid or desperate enough to think Father might believe it. Then he hears him sniffing the air. "Blood," he says. A pause. "You're burning your sheets."

"I am."

There's no need to explain why. They've been through this before. Father waits a moment, and then lets out a hideous, terrifying roar, and Mother's breath is suddenly choked out of her like she's being squeezed by the throat. Rhaegar digs his nails into his thigh so he won't leap out of his position. _She's my mother, I have to protect her,_ but he knows she'd never forgive him if he tried. Besides, he'd only make it worse.

"You've murdered my son!" Father shouts, and Mother just gurgles. "Whose bastard was it this time, whore?! One of the stablehands, or one of the stallions? Did all my kingsguard have you, one after another, so you couldn't tell whose it was if you tried? Or did Lord Tywin make his way into your bed, have his son steal the throne out from me that way?!"

Mother gasps for breath like he's let her neck go, but Rhaegar knows the respite will be short-lived, and sure enough then the first blow comes. "Worthless slut! Bitch! Traitor! Joanna wouldn't – if Father could see you–"

Despite the rage in him, after the sixth blow Father stops. He considers it beneath the dignity of the king to break the Law of Six, one of Jaehaerys' reforms, but though he might not beat Mother hard he beats her often, so Rhaegar wonders what difference it truly makes. After a moment, Mother speaks. "If Father could see us," she murmurs.

"...This will not happen again," says Father, and they all know he's not talking about the beating. "I will not lose my heirs to your perversions. I will tame you, woman."

He storms out, and as soon as he's gone Rhaegar bursts out of his hiding place. "Mother!" he cries, running to her side, the skin around her eye blooming as purple as its pupil, and even though Rhaegar is still smaller than her he tries to fold her into her arms. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have hid, I should have protected you, I'm sorry–"

"Rhaegar–"

"I'll kill him, I swear I will, you know how good with a sword I am, I'll never let him do this to you again–"

"Rhaegar!" she pushes him away, looking horrified. "Do you know the treason you speak of?"

"I don't care, he hurt you, I won't let him–"

"Damn you, boy!" And Rhaegar jumps. Father is always losing his temper with him, but Mother, never. For a second she looks as mad as he does. "Do you think I want you to be a kinslayer on my account?!"

Rhaegar gapes for a moment, then averts his eyes. "But – I can't let him–"

"It is not a matter of letting. We have no choice."

Rhaegar flinches as if struck, and when he meets her eye again, she sighs sadly. "I'm sorry, sweetling, I didn't mean to be so – come here," she says, folding him into her arms, and Rhaegar has never felt such a child. "My poor boy. My wonderful, brave, strong, kind boy. But you must be careful. You have a soft heart, and unless you learn to harden it, it will be the death of you."

He wants to sob against her bosom, but he hardly thinks that it what she means. "But what if I do," he says, "and I end up like him?"

His mother hesitates. "You could never be like him."

"How can you know?" he asks. "After all, he wasn't always like this. I remember."

"...No, I suppose he wasn't," she murmurs, perhaps remembering a childhood when he was her brother and nothing more. He expects her to continue, to reassure him, to give him some way to believe he really could never be Father – but she doesn't, and then Rhaegar looks down to the floor.

"Why don't we just run away?" he whispers, barely daring to say it. "Sneak down to the docks and find ourselves passage on a ship. Make our way to Pentos or Lys or somewhere. We'd fit in in the Free Cities, and Father, he doesn't even like us, he'd be glad to be rid of us–"

"But his honour would never suffer the slight. He'd have us both killed out of spite," Mother says, and Rhaegar frowns. _What, he can kill his kin, but I can't?_ "Besides, even if I could, I wouldn't. I am the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, my duty is here."

"But you never wanted to be queen," Rhaegar says. "You didn't want to marry him. You wanted to marry Bonnifer Hasty." He understands that now, what the crown of the Queen of Love and Beauty meant, and it makes him think how stupid he was to think the man would ever want him as a squire, the son of the woman he loved by the man she was sold to.

"I did," she smiles sadly. "But duty wouldn't mean very much if only the ones we chose counted. I am queen, and you will be king. Our lives are not our own," she says. "I will be the best queen I can be until my dying day. That's more than I can say for him."

Rhaegar looks away again. He knows she's right. _I am the dragon. I am the prince who was promised_. But he'd really rather not be. "Why does he hate me?" he asks, which is maybe the wrong thing to say when she's the one who's just had her face beaten in, but he cannot help himself. "He wants another son so much. Why does he hate the one he has?"

Mother sighs again. "He does not hate you, dear Rhaegar," she says. "It's just... you were our first born, the seed he planted in my belly when Father forced us to the altar. He did not want to marry me any more than I wanted to marry him. I'm afraid, to him you will always be the child his blood saddled him with, not a child he ever chose to have, and he cannot forgive you for it."

Rhaegar nods, a sense of terror coming over him. "Do you hate me?"

"Sweetling, I could never."

He should leave it at that, be glad he has one parent who loves him, and yet he cannot help himself: "Do you hate him?"

Mother purses her lips together in a stern line. "No."

So maybe nothing she says means anything.

* * *

He has to sneak past the guards. He's sure they hear the noise coming from beneath his cloak, and he's afraid they won't want to let him in, afraid of what his father would say – it's not worth their lives – but they just seem amused. That, or they think it's not worth their lives to go defying the crown prince either.

Nyssie looks confused when he wakes her. "What is it?" she asks.

Rhaegar presses a finger over his lips. "Shh. Your mother will kill me if she finds out I woke you at this hour," he says. "I brought you something."

She still looks confused, but that expression turns to one of delight as he reveals what he's been hiding under cloth all this time. "Kitty!"

Rhaegar laughs as she scoops the tiny scrap of black fluff into her arms, and the kitten lets out a meow of alarm before settling in remarkably quickly, starting to purr as Nyssie cradles him to her chest. They match, black hair and black fur. The poor thing started following Rhaegar as he walked back from the tavern, mayhaps a little drunk, but as he watched the half-starved one-eared creature he thought that Nyssie had always wanted a pet, and he thought if he found a stray near home he'd take it in for her, but you don't really get strays on Dragonstone, it's too bare, too barren. He could have sent for one, a finely bred creature meant for ladies and princesses, but it would have to come from King's Landing and he could only imagine Father's sneer if he learnt Rhaegar was wasting the realm's coin on a cat.

"Now Nyssie, you have to keep him secret for a little, alright?" she frowns up at him, confused, and Rhaegar gives his best reassuring smile. "Just for a little awhile, until we head back to Dragonstone. You don't want your grandfather finding out; he won't be pleased."

She nods, looking very serious for a three year old. She's been so frightened since that incident with the poacher, and Rhaegar wanted to cheer her up. For awhile, he thinks he's failed. But then her childish delight wins out again, and she grins. "I love you, Father."

"I love you too," he says. "Now, what are you going to call him?"

He thinks the kitten might make her think of Dorne also, that she might choose something to honour her mother's family, mayhaps for her uncle Oberyn who writes all the time and sends her little gold necklaces picked up in his travels, but instead she chooses–

"Balerion. The black dread."

Rhaenys makes a scratching motion with her nails, and Rhaegar makes sure his smile does not fall.

In truth, he overestimates daughter's ability to keep a secret, and so it's only a few days before he sees her running along the halls with Balerion running behind bookshelves and ducking into alcoves alongside her, Nyssie jokingly shushing him every once in awhile. Rhaegar is about to go fetch them before somebody sees when she turns a corridor, and Rhaegar sees his father, hair matted and talons scratching and looking as monstrous as ever, heading straight for her.

Rhaegar wants to cry out a warning, but his voice seems to be stolen from him. Nyssie, so absorbed in her game, barely notices before she walks right into him. "Y-your Grace," she says, joy replaced with absolute terror on her face, and she performs a feeble curtsey. "Grandfather."

"Princess Rhaenys." _Granddaughter_ , he does not call her. _Please, don't hurt her, she's just a little girl, she's my little girl, please_. From behind a bookshelf, Balerion lets out a confused mewl, probably wondering why the game has stopped. Father frowns. "What's that?" he asks, and Rhaenys gapes a bit for an answer before Balerion's little black head pops out. "Is he yours?"

"Y-yes. Your Grace," Nyssie stutters out, and Balerion just stands there, watching. _Run, you stupid cat! Isn't that what you're good at?_ Father bears his teeth in a savage grin.

"Can I hold him?"

Rhaegar feels like the air's been punched out of him. _No, don't hurt him, he's just a silly kitten; you'll break Nyssie's heart._ "Of course, Your Grace," she answers automatically. Balerion himself is considerably more skeptical, but ultimately he leaps into his mistress' arms, and she passes him over to the king.

Father holds the little scrap of fur close to him, and he hissing softly. Rhaegar hopes he might scratch Father's eyes out, and then he and Nyssie could get away in the confusion. That's what a real dragon would do. Father just chuckles. "Oh, he's a warrior cat alright. I bet he lost that ear in a fight. What's his name?"

"Balerion."

"The black dread." Father grins again, and then rubs the kitten behind his one ear, careful not to scratch with his long nails. Balerion leans into the petting. And then–

He passes him back to Nyssie.

She looks as stunned as Rhaegar feels, and quickly holds him close. "Don't let your father catch him," the king chuckles. "His daughter, having fun? Gods only know what he would think."

Rhaegar finally feels like he can talk, breathe, move. "Rhaenys!" he calls out, and she spins around. "You're late for your lessons. Come along."

The relief on her face is palpable, and she runs to his side, throwing herself around his leg. When Rhaegar catches his father's eye for a moment, he sees an expression he's not sure he's ever seen before. _I've hurt his feelings_ , he realises. And he hates that there is still a part of him that feels guilty.

* * *

He always comes here alone, not even with guards. Is it safe? Probably not, but he can't bring himself to care. He almost died here the day he was born, and if he does die here after all, that seems rather fitting. It would make an excellent song.

He lies on the ground, surrounded by char and rubble, silver harp hanging loosely in one hand. He will come back with a song, he always does, but he cannot think of anything right now and knows better than to try and force it. Still, there is always a song in the end. Arthur teases him for it, the melancholy prince lying in fields of death to write pretty poetry, and Rhaegar and laughs and teases himself also, and pretends it does not bother him, pretends he does not feel like Arthur must think there's something wrong with him.

Perhaps there is something wrong with him. He knows Mother thinks there is; when he told her where he was going she got that look upon her face. _Why would you want to go there?_ she'd asked, reaching for her wine, and Rhaegar hadn't really known. _I have to, Mother,_ he'd said, which wasn't an answer at all. She almost lost her life here, was barely saved by Ser Duncan, a man of war who had to help her give birth out on the grass surrounded by flame and death. He wonders if it still haunts her. He wonders if she doesn't ever think she'd have been better off had she simply burnt to death with all the rest.

It was King Aegon who'd wanted, who'd needed to hatch dragons, because what are the Targaryens without their dragons? And all he'd done was set half his family ablaze. Everyone always speaks so well of Aegon the Unlikely, the last truly good king of Westeros, noble and humble and kind to the smallfolk. And in the end, he'd slaughtered dozens chasing an impossible dream. He was as mad as the rest of them.

There'd been a woodswitch, Jenny of Oldstones' friend, and she told his grandfather a prophecy. The prince who was promised. And so Prince Aerys and Princess Rhaella had wed, and what a great match that was. Jaehaerys should never have been able to do it anyways, should never have been the heir, should never have had so much power, but Prince Duncan gave it all up. For love.

Rhaegar knows he should not be like them. He should not be too loving, like Aegon and Duncan and Grandfather. But he should not be too unloving, like Father, like the other Aerys. He should not be too sad, like Aegon the Third. He should not be too merry, like Viserys the First. He should not be too godly, like Baelor the Blessed. He should not be too godless, like Aegon the Unworthy. He should not be at war with his own family, like Aegon and Rhaenyra.

 _I should not be._ That would settle the matter, wouldn't it? The Faith is right, he is an abomination. A pretty abomination with a pretty silver harp and pretty silver lance to match his pretty silver hair, but still an abomination. He is not even one born of illicit passion, like his father was, born on the night his grandparents stole away to wed in secret before their father could stop them – Rhaegar knows his family can't be the only one to commit such sins, but they are the only one to have them forced upon them. His mother and father might have been able to love each other, if they'd been allowed to do so as the gods intended, as brother and sister. How can he hate his father for all he's done, when it was not truly his fault, when it was bred into him to go so mad? But Rhaegar does hate him, oh how he hates him. If Rhaegar goes just as mad, and does things just as awful, will he be just as hated?

It was grandfather who did it, King Jaehaerys, three years and barely a paragraph in the histories, but he ruined them all. The hypocrite, who wed his sister because _he loved her_ , the pervert, and then raped his son and daughter with each other's bodies for prophecy. The man who looked at a three-year-old boy and told him he had been worth it, as if he could possibly know.

 _I am the dragon, I am the prince who was promised._ But who would promise the world one of _them_ , a family mad and wrong and doomed, always doomed?

 _Fuck you, Jaehaerys, and your prophecy. Fuck you, Duncan, and your commoner slut. Fuck you Duncan, and your mad king. Fuck you Jenny, and your woodswitch. Fuck you Mother, and your duty. Fuck you Father, fuck you. Fuck you Aegon, and your dragons. I'm only sad you didn't manage to kill more of them. I wish they all burned._

He's wanted to go among the seaside merchants and see if he can't find himself a shirt or a doll littered with the grey plague, be sent to live out his days in the ruins of Valyria, going even madder than Father. He can do no damage there. They are Valyrians, they belong in Valyria; they should never have left. Westeros, with its seven kingdoms and seven gods, was not meant for them. They tried to reforge it in dragonfire, but in truth they left only a misshapen mess of melted steel, fit for no-one, man or dragon. The dragons are all gone. They were wise enough to realise they did not belong.

Rhaegar reaches for his harp and plucks one note, only to break the string. Of course. He sighs and lies back down. _I wish we all burned,_ he thinks. _Fuck you, Daenys, and fuck your dreams._

* * *

Lyanna is already awake when he knocks on her door. From the armour he wears, he knows she knows why he's here. "You're riding to battle," she says, and it is not a question.

"I am," he answers anyway. "Are you relieved?"

She shrugs. "Well I might hate you, but I don't even know the rest of them," she says. "What are you doing here?"

Rhaegar sighs. "I wanted to – apologise. About what I said the other day." He's avoided her since that fight, too ashamed to meet her eye. "I hope you know, I didn't mean it. I did not choose you because I thought you were stupid. I chose you because you were strong. Because you were brave. Because I thought, maybe, I might be able to make you happy."

A long pause, and then Lyanna sighs in return. "I know," she says. "There are a thousand stupid girls who would have spread their legs for you at the first opportunity. But you had to choose the least politically convenient one of the lot."

He smiles weakly at that. "To be fair, I was also pretty stupid, and spread my legs pretty easily," he says. Lyanna laughs at that. Then she pauses.

"You're going to fight Robert, aren't you?" she asks and he nods. "Look, if – if he surrenders, you will show mercy won't you?"

"Of course." Robert would never do that and everyone knows it, but Rhaegar would if he asked. He feels no joy at the thought of killing a man who believes Rhaegar kidnapped and raped his betrothed. Lyanna chews her lip.

"He's not a bad man," she says. "He wouldn't have been a very good husband but he's not a bad man."

Rhaegar sighs and, feeling like she won't lash out at him for it, comes to sit on the end of her bed. "You said he already had a bastard in the Vale."

Lyanna averts her eyes and shrugs uncomfortably. "Well I ran away with a married man and am carrying his bastard right now. Who am I to judge?"

"Not a bastard," Rhaegar insists. "Remember the godswood? We were wed in the eyes of the Old Gods."

Lyanna looks confused for a second, and then she laughs. "Oh, right," she says. "I'm not sure how many people still follow that tradition. I'm not sure how many people even know about it."

"Well I know," says Rhaegar. "And to me at least, you are my wife."

She raises an eyebrow. "You already have a wife."

"Aegon the Conqueror had two wives, why can't I?"

"Because you are not Aegon the Conqueror."

He averts his eyes. She has a point there. He is not Aegon the Conqueror, or anyone so admirable – no, he is his grandfather again, he simply fucked the woman he wanted behind everyone's backs, made her his before they could stop him. And it proved just as costly. "You can go back to Winterfell," he says. "If you want, I'll have the kingsguard escort you."

He meets her eye again, and she sighs. "Left it a bit late, didn't you?" she asks. "I can barely waddle to the window in my state, let alone make it all the way to Winterfell."

She's right, of course she's right. The babe is almost here, and they have to keep her safe until then. He cannot fix it now; the only solution is to have never done it in the first place. "I'm sorry," he says, looking away again, and he feels like he's about to cry but he realises he has no right to do so.

"...Why did you do it all, Rhaegar?" Lyanna asks. "I might be pretty, but I know there was more to it than that. What did you tear the realm apart for?"

He lets out a broken chuckle. "The dragon must have three heads."

"Yes, but what does that _mean_?"

Rhaegar lets out a heavy sigh. He's not sure he's ever spoken of it aloud. "There's a prophecy," he explains. "The prince who was promised. It goes back centuries, before Aegon, before us. He's meant to save the world from – something. No-one really knows what." Lyanna frowns, but she's listening. "When Prince Duncan married Jenny of Oldstones, she brought a woodswitch to court. And the witch told King Jaehaerys – my grandfather – that the prince would be born from Aerys and Rhaella's line, my mother and father, that's why he made them wed. That's why I was born. Grandfather was convinced it was me, although I don't know why, I was only three when he did. For years I thought – Summerhall, the salt and the smoke, it _had_ to be me, but then – the comet, so I thought it was Aegon instead. But the dragon must have three heads, that was in the book I first read, but Elia couldn't – so..."

It turns out, spoken aloud it all sounds a bit mad. Still, Lyanna nods like she almost understands. "But why go to so much trouble to fulfil a prophecy, if it's meant to happen anyway?" she asks. "You're a mythical hero, great. Your son is so you don't have to do all the work, even better. But why ruin your life for it? Why is it so damn important?"

"Daenys," he says, and she looks even more bewildered. "There – there has to be a _reason_. We must have escaped the doom for something. The Gods wouldn't have shaped us into this, they wouldn't have made us into murderers and sisterfuckers and monsters unless... unless..."

He looks away again, not sure how to end that sentence. After a long pause, Lyanna speaks.

"Rhaegar, do you want to talk about your father?"

* * *

Grandfather is with the maesters now, and Rhaegar is still worried, but there's nothing he can do. He's been summoned to meet Father, which he doesn't understand, and in the throne room, which he understands less.

He enters to see Father upon the Iron Throne, which makes him frown. "Are you meant to be sitting there?"

Father doesn't answer, but Rhaegar thinks he sees his eye twitch. "Come here, boy."

Rhaegar's confused, but not scared. He knows Father can have a temper, but only really to people who don't show the crown prince enough respect. He's always been kind to his son. When Rhaegar gets close, however, scrambling up the steps, Father turns a violet eye on him. Rhaegar shudders. He doesn't look like Father at all.

"Is something wrong, Father?"

"Your grandfather wanted to see you," he says, and Rhaegar nods. "Why?"

Rhaegar frowns. "Um..." Father taps his fingers on a blade impatiently. "I'm not sure. I didn't really understand what he was talking about. But he is sick, right?"

"What did he _say_?!" A little spittle flies from Father's mouth.

"I – I don't really remember?" Father's eyes narrow, and Rhaegar, starting to be nervous, tries. "He said – he said I was brave, and handsome, and smart. He said I was the perfect prince. He said I was 'worth it'?"

Rhaegar still doesn't understand any of that, but from the way he grits his teeth, he thinks Father might. "He thinks it's you."

"He thinks what's me?"

Father grabs his collar and pulls him close, and Rhaegar lets out a wail of pain as his feet slip out from under him. "It's you, of course it's you," he spits, twisting Rhaegar's shirt in a ball until it chokes him, and tears come to his eyes. "Three fucking years old and you're already the perfect prince. It's not me, it could never be me; too proud, too vain, too reckless. I'm just keeping the seat warm between you two, am I?"

Rhaegar isn't listening, he's trying desperately, futilely, to pull out of Father's grip, but that only makes him pull tighter. "Father, please–"

"You're so smart, everyone says, not like your stupid Father. Do you think you're better than me boy? Do you?!"

"No, no–" of course not, he's always loved his father, why would he even think that?

"Look at you, crying like a little girl, like your mother," Father sneers, and Rhaegar tries desperately to stop the tears coming, but they won't. He's _scared_. Why is Father acting like this? "You're nothing, you hear me?! Nothing! All you are is my son! You're only the prince because you're _my son_ , you'd be nothing without me, you'll never be any better than me, do you understand?!"

"Nothing, I'm nothing, please let me go Father, please–" he sobs and then Father tosses him back down the stairs, and as he goes tumbling Rhaegar feels a sharp _snap_ in his wrist. He almost screams in pain, but he bites his tongue. That might make Father angrier.

When he dares look up, clutching his wounded hand in agony, Father has not moved. He is still sitting in the Iron Throne, and he does not look at his son. "Get out of my sight," he says.

Rhaegar, three years and terrified, runs.

* * *

 _The dragon has many heads now,_ he thinks as his vision starts to blur, the crest on his armour sprawling head after head, although he's not sure what is the pattern of the dragon and what is blood from where Robert smashed him with his warhammer.

 _What will happen to my dragons now?_ Aegon and Nyssie are in the capital, and poor sweet Elia, with his father, and that was frightening enough but now Robert is coming for them – and Lyanna and her babe, who even knows what will happen to them?

 _The prophecy, the dragon must have three heads; they have to survive, it has to protect them,_ but in truth he never understood that prophecy, he just wanted to believe it could understand him, and maybe it never had anything to do with him at all. His parents have other children.

 _I tried, gods I tried so hard,_ he wanted so much to make his family right somehow, to make them good. Robert thinks the only good Targaryen is a dead one. _What about your grandmother then?_ but Robert doesn't seem the type to be too concerned with his ancestry. He would never understand.

As the life slips from him, he finds his mouth twisting into the shape of a woman's name. But he dies before he realises whose it is.


End file.
